Talk:Cryonics/archive2

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Specific reasons to claim that today's cryonics will not work

Nanobots (and/or uploading) never being invented.

Insufficient information being preserved by today's cryonics.

Reanimation tech taking too long to develop.

Specific scenarios for cryonics not working. All possible, none proven. If you have an intelligent opinion on any of these topics or another scenario in which cryonics demonstrably does not work, please post it. Luke (talk) 15:57, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

(Archived conversation -- apologies for deletion --Luke (talk) 16:21, 20 February 2010 (UTC))

I don't understand what "archived conversation" means. I see no link to an archive. Luke, we don't remove talk page comments here, if that's what you did. ħuman 20:41, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Argh. I meant only that I changed the above and thus what follows does not necessarily fit with what was originally there. Still getting the hang of wiki ettiquite / mechanics. Luke (talk) 20:55, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Wiki pages are a terrible medium for threaded conversations. LiquidThreads is coming in the near future and has been for about four or five years. (Not enough nanobots, obviously.) -

Gee there is a lot of question begging going on there. - π 06:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Can you elaborate a bit on what you mean exactly by that? Luke (talk) 07:04, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Changed the wording slightly. Let me know if this helps with the issue you had in mind. Luke (talk) 07:25, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually that makes it worse, you sound like you are sure you will defeat anyone that disagrees with you. - π 11:18, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, can you suggest a specific improvement? Luke (talk) 15:13, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Is that better? You only specifically mentioned question begging as a problem, but you haven't yet told me which question you think is being begged or what. Luke (talk) 15:13, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

What I am trying to do is narrow down the specific disagreements. Agreeing or disagreeing with cryonics itself is not as important as having a specific, rational position on the topics that might lead to a position on the subject. Luke (talk) 07:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Has there ever been a single instance of present-day cryoncis working on humans?--Bob^{It's cold!} 21:19, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Define "working on humans" more specifically and you'll get a more specific answer... Luke (talk) 21:34, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Is there any scientific evidence whatsoever that current cryonics methods will actually preserve anything at all? So far the answer has been "who knows what will happen in 500 years," "hey look over there!" and "but, NANOBOTS!" These are not satisfactory answers - David Gerard (talk) 21:38, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

What sort of evidence are you looking for? Luke (talk) 23:08, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

What I said. There is, as far as I can tell, no scientific evidence that anything current cryonics practice does is actually any better at preserving a mind than mummification was. I've asked for this several times now. Is there any? - David Gerard (talk) 23:16, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

And, to clarify: saying there might be such science in the future doesn't count - David Gerard (talk) 23:19, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Definition of "working on humans"- Has any dead human being ever been completely frozen and brought back to life?--Bob^{It's cold!} 22:14, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

In that case, the answer is unambiguously no. Luke (talk) 22:20, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

At this point, the viability of the proposition is about as far from certain from either conclusion as possible. It is, however, clearly tied to organ preservation success trends, and Pubmed is full of secondary souces on those. (More to follow!) Do we need a nine-cell Pascal's Wager matrix in (0, 0.5, 1)^2 instead of four (0,1)^2 cells? 99.191.75.124 (talk) 03:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I mean something like this:

what you believe now: --> what is actually true	cryonics doesn't work	you have no idea	cryonics works
cryonics doesn't work	you die without wasting money	you die anyway	you waste your money and die anyway
cryonics fails part of the time	you die rich but some peers live on	depends on whether you risk it	you have a chance to live on
cryonics works	you die and wealthy peers live on	depends on whether you risk it	you pay the freeze fee and live

Is that more helpful than a 2x2 outcome Pascal's Wager? Now that I've written it out, I'm less convinced that it may be. 99.191.75.124 (talk) 19:30, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Early failures?

A message on Cryonet says "Only James Bedford of all the first cryonauts has stayed cryosuspended until today." So what happened to the others? - David Gerard (talk) 14:30, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Found it: [1] [2] - David Gerard (talk) 14:33, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Whole brain scanning = pseudotechnology

Unlikely to be possible as we understand it. Even with nanobots. - David Gerard (talk) 21:36, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think nanobots, whatever they are, are even pertinent to brain scanning and emulation. We recently got in situ scanning of some really big molecules and if that scales from cells to brains (and the field's prospects seem fine) then we might get the level of data we would need. However, I'd say physical simulation of that data is several decades or even a couple centuries further, because you hit the wall on Moore's law almost by definition: you can't losslessly simulate physics in real time with a computer embedded in those same physics, and who wants a lossy simulation of their brain? So, when we do get brain simulation, it will likely be on giant computers with all of the corresponding power, money, and maintenance problems you would expect. I'm sticking with the Japanese magnet microwave amorphous ice freezers as the likely best prospects. 99.191.75.124 (talk) 21:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Well. Two possibilities. First off, if a civilization has enough "real-time" robotic servants to take care of him, he could actually get away with non real time simulation. Who cares if you take one month to complete a thought as long as someone protects your boxes from things that seem really fast to you. Second there is probably a lot of data someone can get rid of. For example, anything below the neck (or outside the main brain structure) is going to be full of vector graphics & NURB curves obviously. Second, even in regards to the brain structure itself, we don't *really* need to simulate the chemical metabolism of every neuron. A lot of that stuff, is just for the cell's own survival. DNA's, cell membranes, blood vessels, mitochondria and all that can be thrown out. Someone only needs an abstract entity that will be called "neuron" and the laws regarding electro-chemical signalling of neurons to each other. Since its simulation we are talking about, there's always going to be an undo button after all. Plus a "no useless crap" simulation approach (without blood vessels, weight etc) would also allow for other interesting things, like doubling the amount of neurons for someone, over what would be physically possible in a cranium, or increase their apparent communication speed. (ie, have virtual synapses with 0 length) Sen (talk) 01:25, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I am quite fond of my endocrine system and mitochondria. There are some midbrain social instinct connections I could probably do without, but no evidence both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA don't play a huge role in each neuron's function. The same can be said for hormones. 99.191.75.124 (talk) 03:09, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm just going to be answering all objections to everything with "but, NANOBOTS!" from now on. "Turning frozen corpses into people? Nanobots! Balancing the budget? Nanobots! Can't get the chicks? Nanobots! Sarah Palin's scary? Nanobots!" - David Gerard (talk) 22:02, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Hey David, what time is it? --Kels (talk) 01:45, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Nanobots! ħuman 02:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

On the topic of ischemia, this is worth a read: http://sullydog.com/sullysites/qm/brainischemia101syllabus/syllabus/index.html --Luke (talk) 22:58, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Wow, that's a really shitty website. New tabs when clicking on links, no site menu, etc. ħuman 03:52, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I just started at the beginning and hit next. At least it's entertainingly written, for a science piece. Luke (talk) 22:40, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's ask again

I keep asking this and getting tumbleweeds in response.

There is, as far as I can tell, no scientific evidence that anything current cryonics practice does is actually any better at preserving a mind than mummification was. I've asked for this several times now. Is there any?

And, to clarify: saying there might be such science in the future doesn't count. The philosophical burden of proof is on the cryonicists, who are asserting that what they do now is any good at all, even in theory. - David Gerard (talk) 16:45, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

We can't tell. The mass of the frozen organ has so much to do with the outcome, that until lab researchers feel confident enough to give primates over a few kilograms another go, we aren't going to have anything meaningful to say about memory and personality retention. I was going to say that would be decades at least before I started looking at the microwave-based amorphous ice production, but now I'd probably say five or ten years. The good news is that organ preservation trends in traditional transplant medicine are apparently progressing fairly linearly, but I need to poke around in Pubmed more to say for sure. 99.191.75.124 (talk) 19:16, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

There's apparently a fair bit of critique of cryonics practice (per se) in PubMed. Any more than you've found so far? A list would be a very useful thing - David Gerard (talk) 21:01, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, in addition to Chinese also working with microwaves, which I'm trying to get a translation of the abstract for (sadly it looks like that article was published just before its journal's online archives begin, but a local library thinks they can help), this review has been very useful:

• Fahy, G.M. et al (2006) "Cryopreservation of Complex Systems: The Missing Link in the Regenerative Medicine Supply Chain" Rejuvenation Research 9(2):279-91; Review. Excerpt: "Transplantation can be regarded as one form of 'antiaging medicine' that is widely accepted as being effective in extending human life.... it could allow over 30% of all deaths in the United States to be substantially postponed, raising the probability of living to the age of 80 by a factor of two and the odds of living to 90 by more than a factor of 10.... Until recently, the cryopreservation of organs has seemed a remote prospect to most observers, but developments over the past few years are rapidly changing the scientific basis for preserving even the most difficult and delicate organs for unlimited periods of time...." (emphasis added.)

I'm also currently trying to get a handle on what "directional freezing" is because a lot of very recent sources point to this article as it being the greatest thing since sliced bread for ovaries, which are often removed and preserved across chemotherapy regimes in younger female cancer patients:

• Arav, A. and Natan, Y. (2009) "Directional Freezing: A Solution to the Methodological Challenges to Preserve Large Organs" Semin. Reprod. Med. 27(6):438-42. Excerpt: "Although 60 years have passed since the first successful freezing of cells, whole organ freezing is in its initial phase.... In this article we discuss the limiting factors for the successful freezing of whole organs, such as homogeneous cooling rate, supercooling, latent heat, and recrystallization. We show how the use of directional freezing technology provides solutions to these problems...." (emphasis added.)

Apparently, large centrifuges inside freezers may be involved. I'm not sure yet. I'm going to try English Wikipedia's WP:RX of which I'm the newest, biggest fanboy to get that one.

As for general critiques of the practice, which I see now is what you were asking about... These look good: a pro- article in Bioethics; a con- article from Scientific American (nanobots!!!) but I've been shying away from opinion pieces because I'm convinced if anything, this is an active area of research and it's way too soon to make minds up. 99.191.75.124 (talk) 22:48, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Directional freezing is good for homogeneous organ tissues but not heterogeneous collections of organs. Back to the Far East microwaves. 99.191.75.124 (talk) 03:00, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I seem to remember some research into a 'natural antifreeze' found in some amphibians I think, that get frozen in their ponds. Wasnt there successful tests with mice ? A new variation of this was around for a while, storing a dna sample for future cloning. I have not seen that one recently though Hamster (talk) 16:24, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Mummification as practised by the Egyptians involved pulling the brain out and sticking it in a jar. Brain preservation in something might be viable, but not reversible. Hamster (talk) 16:28, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

The similarity is that the Egyptians thought this would work, but there was no basis for it. The frog one is linked in the article - their livers pump out glycerol when they need it to survive partial freezing. I haven't heard of the mouse one - that would be really quite radical news - David Gerard (talk) 18:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Mice simply dropped in beakers of LN2 revive fairly reliably with careful warming, artificial respiration, and electrical shocks, per Smith et al (1957) because they are so small they flash freeze. However, the females are infertile because large oocyte cells are particularly sensitive to ice crystals, and they suffer slightly diminished remaining lifespans for various related reasons. 99.191.75.124 (talk) 20:02, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, gosh! There's a claim I won't make again. I've put the mice one in the text - David Gerard (talk) 23:33, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

It would be nice to see a footnote for that mouse claim. ħuman 00:23, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

In what way is it improbable?

I think there may be a bit of wishful thinking going on here based on the idea that "nothing is impossible" or that "anything could be possible in the future".

In a sense this is true. Lets think about some "possible" future events. The invention of a faster then light drive, the invention of a perpetual motion machine, the rapture, me winning the lottery, the invention of workable cryonics, a manned mission to the sun, the invention of a working useful quantum computer.

It is clear that these are all highly unlikely events. But they are unlikely or improbable in different ways. Some are simply improbable - like the lottery. Others would seem to be impossible based on our current knowledge. (FTL drives.) Some would seem to be impossible on principle (perpetual motion.) And visiting the sun would require technology unimaginably in advance of that which we possess now. For all practical purposes sun tours are impossible for the foreseeable future. The quantum computer may just need a bit more technological development - or a lot more. The Rapture requires intervention form a non-existent entity.

So where do we put cryonics? I think that some may be arguing that it's impossible on principle like FTL or perpetual motion, but for others its like quantum computing. So in what way is it improbable?--Bob^{It's cold!} 21:26, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

To clarify, are you asking whether reanimation of frozen dead people (as best preserved by today's technology) is impossible in principle, or whether freezing people with sufficiently low damage to more easily revive them is impossible in principle? There seems to be some confusion on these points. Luke (talk) 15:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean am I asking about freezing and reviving dead people or freezing and reviving almost dead people?--Bob^{It's cold!} 22:27, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

To me, it's perfectly "possible", like quantum computing. However, the "solution" may not even involve freezing. In other words, the people selling this crap are really charlatans. The science behind it may someday develop, then we'll know how to preserve the dead/dying for future resuscitation and healing. ħuman 03:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

In fact the attempted solution currently being employed doesn't involve freezing, it involves vitrification. Your claim that there may be better alternatives out there (better than the general category of "freezing" meaning low-temperatures) is not convincing to me, in light of generally known current science. There are indeed a few other processes known to science (fixing in chemical solutions, dehydration) but they are not as comprehensive, i.e. more measurable information is lost that way. Luke (talk) 15:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for jumping all over my use of "freezing" for "cold storage". I make no such claim. But in the light of no known way to 1. access the information and 2. utilize it, there is no way of knowing the method of preservation is at all valid. For all we know storage in formalin (or similar) at room temps with proper preparation might maintain the information. ħuman 21:31, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd say we have better working ideas about FTL than cryonics - we at least know what can be done and what can't be done with respect to breaking the speed of light, with cryonics, no one has any idea at all. As Human pointed out, it's peddling a lot of false hope for people who have signed up to it as the entire premise is based around second-guessing a technology that no one has the foggiest idea about - back to the FTL analogy, it's like us spending a few billion dollars on building a stargate and hoping that, soon-ish, someone will invent the technology to make it work. It's sort of on par with this. ^theist 08:04, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

So to be perfectly clear, if it were not for the whole "false hope" issue, as well as the "peddling" issue, would you still be against cryonics as a rational course of action when your life ends? Luke (talk) 15:48, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Luke, what I'd like is for you to stop dodging the question I asked above in the section headed "Let's ask again" - David Gerard (talk) 18:03, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I hate to break it to you guys but, I'm playing Mass Effect 2 right now and according to that, we're less than 200 years away from FTL travel and human re-animation. Also, FTL drives will be common and "affordable", whereas resurrection will be very rare and cost prohibitive (apparently requiring an entire shadow government's resources, an entire team of scientists and highly experimental, not to mention dubious, methods to re-animate a single person). I'd sure hate to be the guy to wake up from being frozen just to find out that I was now $2.2 trillion in debt to the revival team. There it is, from the source, from the FUTURE! "I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favorite store on the Citadel." The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 21:52, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Random musings

I decided to put what I was going to put here in an essay. Commentary on its talkpage is of course very welcome. ħuman 20:50, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

The bit pointing out that "preservation" techniques without corresponding resurrection techniques make no sense needs to go in somewhere, though I'm not sure where. This is what makes cryonics a pseudotechnology - David Gerard (talk) 23:40, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I dont agree. If the ressurection methods existed now then there could be planning for trips to the nearest stars. Is the preservation method adequate to provide a good chance of recovery at some time in the future, and what upper limit, if any, does the storage method have. It would seem that preventing cell damage by the freezing process would be adequate. The problems of regrowing nerve cells, and repairing damaged organs could be a gamble but reasonable given advances in medicine in the 20th century. A bigger question , which has been done in fiction , is WHY would a future society want to restore corpsicles. Hamster (talk) 00:10, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

To put them in a zoo; to use them as slaves; they're tastier when warm? ħuman 00:26, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I envision growing fresh meat in vats. Society seems to be moving in the direction of vegetarianism anyway. Robotic "slaves" will probably be more cost effective. If not (and ignoring the ethical issues) one would suspect that genetically engineered clones would work better as slaves than thawed 21st century humans who are used to freedom.

A human zoo might be an interesting place to try and break out of, but more than likely they would use a simulated environment where at least the illusion of freedom can be had (since the desire for freedom is essential to human nature), so you might not even know you are there. Future animal zoos will arguably be simulated or material wild habitats as well... We only put them in cages because of limited technology to view them at close proximity otherwise. Luke (talk) 16:09, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and I forgot "to hunt them for sport". The future ain't necessarily going to be a nice place. ħuman 19:20, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Sure, all kinds of dystopias can be envisioned. They are just not overwhelmingly likely as far as scenarios go. The trend is towards less cruelty towards humans and animals in developed regions of the world. That's not to say the future will be perfect, but I hardly think it'll be inhabited primarily by sociopaths. Luke (talk) 20:34, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I dunno about trends... things may be cozy in my neighborhood but the last century's been pretty rough in some places. Just saying, is all. ħuman 00:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

This is a good question. Alcor and CI try to create a sort of contractual obligation for reanimation. Alcor puts a large portion of the money they receive into a patient care trust, which presumably is to be spent on reanimation should that be expensive. Essentially this works as long as societal stability is sufficiently good for the organization (and its money) to continue existing in the same form.

A more general motivation to reanimate is that they would find it interesting to bring back a few historical figures from our era. Further, once some members of our era are alive and walking about they'll be motivated to bring back others from their original culture/time, just as immigrants from less developed to more developed countries often save up to allow their families to move there.

A further consideration is that the science of the future will presumably have had the reversible suspension problem cracked long before cryonic reanimation is possible. So they'll be used to seeing everyone as "not dead" under those circumstances, and may very well feel a moral obligation to bring back ancient cryonauts who they do not see as dead. Even if this is not the general social consensus, it is easy to see it becoming the consensus of a motivated minority who would be capable of spending the money and effort to do the job. Luke (talk) 16:09, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Alcor's interest is of course unblemished

[3][4] So, uh, the body is on dry ice right now and has been for a month. Alcor is fighting to get the head and the accompanying $50k annuity.

I see two possibilities: 1. cryonics now claims dry ice (-79°C) is sufficient preservation for its purposes. 2. Alcor's primary interest is the money.

I ask only cryonics advocates to explain which they think is the case, 'cos the rest of us are obviously far too cynical - David Gerard (talk) 16:51, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry, I foresee technology that will be able to bring her back. ^{— Sincerely, Neveruse / Talk / Block} 16:56, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

According to Alcor's How Cold Is Cold Enough? FAQ, a month on dry ice is roughly equivalent to forty minutes lying there dead - not great, but people have been revived from such. Just - David Gerard (talk) 23:47, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

[5][6] Alcor won in court regarding the patient's final desires, and relinquished claim on the money. Evidently the daughter was more interested in the money than the principle of the thing, so she's not going to appeal. Too bad she just gypped her mother out of a top-notch vitrification and forced her to wait at dry ice temperature for several weeks. Oh, and from the sound of it this was after she withheld pain medications to get her mom to sign the change of beneficiary form. Geez. Luke (talk) 03:07, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Wiki-lawyering vs. whitewashing

Lsparrish seems to be taking out the SPOV of this article in favor of making the woo parts of cryonics sounds nicer. Punky ^{Your mental puke relief} 05:00, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Maybe you could specifically add in the necessary SPOV parts instead of undoing my work? Luke (talk) 05:03, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

The SPOV was already in there. You are just doing to it what Ed Poor did to the Moonies over at Wikipedia. Lord of the Goons ^{The official spikey-haired skeptical punk} 05:05, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't catch the reference. What happened? Luke (talk)

I'm not sure why editing the organ preservation section constitutes making the "woo parts" sound nicer. What specifically gave that impression? Luke (talk)

Simple, you are changing a word here, a sentence there, and deleting this point over here to make the article sound less critical of cryonics in general and Ben Best in particular. Fine, if this wasn't a skeptical website. Conservative Punk (talk) 05:23, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

What is more important, being skeptical or being factual? --BenBest (talk) 05:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Despite what you may believe, the two are not mutually exclusive. I Eat Glue (talk) 05:33, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Skepticism is great, as long as it is honest skepticism grounded in a solid understanding of the facts. I don't have time for the other kind. Luke (talk) 05:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

(EC) That has nothing to do with it. If we toy with adjectives all day to make someone look good instead of looking critical of them when the point of the article is be critical instead of nice, then it is wiki-lawyering. It has shit to do with facts and everything to do with adjectives. Changing "claims" to "believes" or whatever and such to make an article nicer to someone and some concept is wiki-lawyering, not being "factual. Conservative Punk (talk) 05:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't care if anyone reverts my adjectives, but the factual corrections still need to be included. Luke (talk) 05:46, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Pibot

This is probably one of those pages that will have multiple archives, due to its popularity. should we implement Pibot? Aboriginal Noise ^{Theist, barely hanging by a nail} 01:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I think we should implement "forum". Most of the comments on this talk page have little to do with "improving the article", a lot of them are just cryoniphiles making little sense but debating anyway. Maybe someone would like to move all the non-article imrpovement stuff to a forum, where we can yell at each other to our hearts' content, and keep this page for discussing changes/improvements/etc.? ħuman 02:26, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Who gets to decide what constitutes trying to improve the article? Are all allowed to bring talk sections back from either sort of archive? 99.191.75.124 (talk) 03:28, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

It isn't a matter of who gets to decide. The page is growing incremently long, so it was proposed that the page be archived by Pibot (an automatic program designed to keep talk pages in order). We could et it at 7 days, as that should be enough time to decide the beginnings of article content. Aboriginal Noise ^{Theist, barely hanging by a nail} 03:33, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Most of the talk here is not about improving the article, its people arguing about cryonics. So, "we" get to decide, 99x. We're not talking about archiving (well, I'm not), we're talking about creating a forum page - or a debate page - where the arguments can fly. The arguments aren't about improving the article and should probably be moved. ħuman 03:45, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

How much does discussion of a subject overlap with attempting to improve its article? Where do you draw the line between the two? 99.191.75.124 (talk) 06:54, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Tricky one. This is largely the process of an original-research article being written. This is about the most detailed article anywhere on cryonics that isn't a puff piece. (The Wikipedia article has largely been puff-pieced.) Pibot is enough, I'd think - David Gerard (talk) 10:50, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I shall implement Pibot archiving, then. Gooniepunk2010 ^{Oi! Oi! Oi!} 06:33, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

The role of money

The role of money in the cryonics debate seems rather prominent. Are cryonics organizations less credible for charging money for the service? Would they be more credible if they were offering it for free? If cryonics was free, would skeptics sign up for it since it doesn't cost them anything? Luke (talk) 02:52, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

It's a business. They charge for a service. They may be organized as a "non profit" but they still have to survive as a corporate entity. They charge for a service that they cannot claim "will work". Thus, they are charlatans. Seriously. I don't care how many mouse ovaries or livers they recovered for three days (or whatever), the product they sell is unproven. ħuman 04:11, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't make sense to me. People buy into a chance on something all the time. Why is uncertainty about the outcome an automatic sign of a scam in your ethical system? Are stock market investments a scam? Luke (talk) 04:19, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

The term "charlitans" implies deception, and implies that there should be a law against it. Is that seriously what you mean by the term? Luke (talk) 06:01, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

A play of words. If someone defines their product as: "stopping decomposition past x point" to the best of their abilities, then their "product" is both objective & proven. It's crypreservation not cryo-defrosto-rejuvenation service Sen (talk) 16:18, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Cryonics is not cryogenics (and vice-versa)

The title of this article is "cryonics", not "cryogenics" for the good reason that it deals with cryopreservation of humans for the purpose of future cure, rejuvenation and revival (cryonics) — NOT with low temperature physics (cryogenics). What then does David Gerard mean when he says "everyone who isn't a cryonics advocate calls this 'cryogenics'" ? Every practicing physicist and engineer in the field of cryogenics knows he or she is not doing cryonics (See Wikipedia: Cryogenics: Definitions and distinctions). Calling cryonics cryogenics is distinctive of those who don't know the first thing about cryonics. --BenBest (talk) 05:20, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

The article already points out the difference between "cryonicists" - ie, woo-meisters and "cryogenisists" - ie, scientists. Don't worry Ben, we've got it covered. ħuman 05:23, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

"I can't remember ever having convinced anyone that life is desirable" Hahaahahahahaahahahaha ħuman 05:33, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

If cryonics lacks validity, that should be a conclusion, not a premise. You are doing nothing more rational than throwing taunts and insults. --BenBest (talk) 05:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

But seriously, Ben, have you never convinced anyone that life is "desirable" ħuman 05:39, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Desire for life is natural. Convincing someone of it is generally redundant unless they are depressed. But most people don't take rational steps to try and extend their lives beyond the natural maximum. Why don't they? Perhaps you can give us some insight, Human. Luke (talk) 06:13, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you can enlighten us to why they would want to? Perhaps you can give us some insight, Luke/LParrish? ħuman 06:25, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

What's the point in extending my natural life to, say, 140 years old if I'm going to be crippled and have dementia? Gooniepunk2010 ^{Oi! Oi! Oi!} 06:27, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

At some point they have to cure aging, or it isn't possible to live longer. Being crippled and having dementia are symptoms of a radical cascade of physical damage. Just being in that state increases your chance of suddenly dropping dead of various complications. You can't really have life extension without health extension. Luke (talk) 06:40, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

(unindenting) Okay. But why would I wish to live forever? The reason life extension isn't popular amongst the masses is because people realize that death is inevitable and a natural progression from life. Can you imagine what it would be like if you lived for 2000 years? I know I'd, at least, get bored with life after about 100 years or so, if not sooner. Lord of the Goons ^{The official spikey-haired skeptical punk} 06:43, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

You appear to be under the impression that supporting life extension is self-excluding with also supporting the right to suicide. Sen (talk) 16:52, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

We're not talking about ending death. Accidental or intentional death is still possible. More to the point, what most people suppose is that death by aging is inevitable and a natural progression of life. But the logical justification for this escapes me. If we are opposed to death by other kinds of disease such as heart disease or cancer, is it not also right to be opposed to death by old age? What would give old age a privileged status as a cause of debilitation and death?

As to the thought that boredom would inevitably result, I don't see why this should be considered a reasonable presupposition, particularly as someone who has never actually had the experience of living hundreds of years. It seems people get more resistant to the effects of boredom as they get older. Furthermore boredom is essentially just a signal that you don't have enough interesting things to do at a given moment, it does not seem to be something that accumulates over the years. Given a good education and a good imagination, I don't really think running out of interesting things to do is possible in only a few thousand years. Luke (talk) 08:16, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Viable eggs versus ovaries

Regarding one of the points Ben Best contested recently, if an ovary is vitrified and produces live pups afterward does that not technically prove that it is a working organ? My thought is that it is rather weak (compared to say a kidney) because the ovary basically just holds the eggs and dispenses them every month. If egg survival under vitrification is unsurprising, egg survival within an ovary is only slightly less unsurprising. I think that is what the article is trying to get at. But still, it is significant that vital cells are being preserved in organs as opposed to just free-floating cells. Also, the fact that rates were just as high as non-vitrified ovaries seems significant as well. Anyone have thoughts on this? Luke (talk) 14:51, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

What is it with the spurious probabilities?

Cryonics advocates appear fond of giving non-zero probabilities for nonexistent technologies apparently based on nothing whatsoever. I don't understand where these probabilities are supposed to come from in a defensible fashion. Can anyone explain? - David Gerard (talk) 21:17, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I think their argument is that if a claim can't be disproved ("nanobots!") then it has to be accepted as "possible", therefore the chance is greater than zero. There's a little sleight of hand there, of course, because just because the nonexistent technology can't be disproved, it doesn't mean the probability of it being developed ever isn't actually zero. ħuman 21:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

So where do they defensibly get the number from? CRYONICS ADVOCATES! HOW DO YOU DERIVE YOUR NON-ZERO NUMBERS? - David Gerard (talk) 21:34, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

I kinda liked the last BON edit. "Foreseen" is such a great weasel word. ^{— Sincerely, Neveruse / Talk / Block} 21:30, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Um. I don't think you see cryonicists going around saying there is proof for a particular nonzero probability. (Perhaps in your imagination this is, or should be, the case?) Given the fact that it depends on undeveloped technologies and unknown preservation requirements, I don't think it is currently possible to come up with an objective estimation of its probability. I would say that it is nonzero because there is no physical law preventing a) sufficient information preservation having occurred or b) sufficient technology from being developed. Compared to mummies, I will say that the observable information preservation (i.e. through an electron microscope) in relevant areas (the brain) is much higher. The degree of observable information loss does not seem to place reanimation outside the realm of technological plausibility in nearly the same way that it does with mummies. Luke (talk) 22:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

"undeveloped technologies and unknown preservation requirements" makes it loser science/technology. You're just playing with fantasies you hope will come true, like the Egyptians. ħuman 04:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm better informed than an Egyptian on the matter. Technology and scientific knowledge have progressed since then. And your doubt that future technologies will be developed baffles me, in light of what has already been developed in recent years. Luke (talk) 16:05, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Evidently it's not clear to you what I'm asking. In the referenced links in the articles to spurious probabilities, you will see cryonicists giving actual numbers to the nonzero probabilities in question. These numbers are not backed up in any way. I am interested in knowing how they derive the nonzero numbers they actually give. And by the way, I still want your answer to the scientific evidence that what cryonicists do now is any good at all - David Gerard (talk) 10:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Do you, specifically, intend to question whether there is evidence that cryonics preserves more observable information than mummification? Is that seriously not obvious? Or are you just throwing in the egyptian comparison as a red herring? I've already stated that whether cryonics works or not (as a method of saving a human life) is an unknown. Cryonics is just holding a higher standard of proof as to whether someone is dead or not, i.e. we need to wait a few centuries to be sure. Regarding the numbers, all the links I've seen you cite specifically label the probabilities as subjective, "my estimate", etc. If they were claiming to have special knowledge of an objective nature about the future I would be dubious indeed. You seem to be objecting to the use of numbers in a context of unknowns, and I'm not sure why this is. Luke (talk) 16:05, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Saying "subjective", "my estimate" doesn't mean the numbers shouldn't have some ability to derive them. And on the scientific evidence: are you admitting that you know of no scientific evidence that what cryonics does right now is any good at all? Yes or no? - David Gerard (talk) 16:53, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

This is hard to answer because you're over-simplifying the question. If you're asking whether non-nanotech solutions can be envisioned for a clinically ideal cryonics case, I think the answer is yes. For evidence I would point to the reanimated kidney. Brains and kidneys share the trait of heavy vascularization, so vitrification of a brain could be reversible just as it is in the kidney. The fact that the kidney doesn't work so well afterward indicates that there will be a lot of damage, but there are potential biotech solutions (like stem cells) to this kind of damage. Extensive memory loss is a distinct possibility, but the brain does replace cells without losing memories. (Furthermore, most people do not consider an Alzheimer's victim to be a different individual, so it is a matter for debate as to what exact degree of brain tissue grafting and repair would constitute death.)

Sub-ideal cases are an entirely different matter, and I don't think anyone is trying to make a serious argument that this is not a matter of extreme speculation, or "faith" if you will. Some people do have a lot of faith in the singularity and nanotech, and some do present scientific cases for it, but I am guessing that is a bit beyond the scope of your question. Luke (talk) 16:30, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I try to extrapolate from success rates reported in literature reviews. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the only non-zero, non-unity probability I've ever mentioned is 50%, which is just the mean between the former two. It's clearly not impossible because counterexamples exist in the small mammals and cold-blooded animals, so zero and one are both worse than 1/2. The rest of the work is trying to get a sense from the literature of how quickly things are progressing to get a number of years associated with the 50% figure. 99.191.75.124 (talk) 20:08, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Without a mathematical basis, picking any non-disproveable probability is invalid. Example: Tossing a coin for heads and rolling a die for a six. Neither has zero or unity probability (both can happen, and nothing prevents them from happening). But the odds of one are 50% and the other 18%. We can only figure this out once we know that in one case there are two (equal) possibilities and the other, six. ħuman 20:28, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Cox's theorem shows that probabilities are the only rational way to make decisions under uncertainty. Ciphergoth (talk) 11:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Please show working for the examples referenced - David Gerard (talk) 16:08, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Significance of kidney vitrification

If scientists can successfully cryopreserve a kidney, does this argue in favor of successful brain preservation? The kidney is one of the body's more complex organs, and like the brain has a high bloodflow rate that makes it relatively easier to cryopreserve [7]. Given that a rabbit can survive on a vitrified and reanimated kidney for 9 days, does that argue that brain preservation might not require "magic" levels of nanotech to reverse? Does this constitute scientific evidence that what cryonics is doing right now (under optimal conditions) is doing some good? Luke (talk) 16:49, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Nine days is not what I would call a "lefterlife". Nine days would be a sad time indeed to rot away in. ħuman 08:47, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

True, but the implanted kidney did not have the advantage of advanced biotech, much less nanotech. In 9 days, given the proper stem cell or growth factor based rejuvenation therapies that might exist 100 years from now, the person could conceivably heal a lot of damage. Would you consider this sort of speculation to be hand-waving? Luke (talk) 15:14, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Neither of which is cryonics and has any relation to what the cryonics cottage-industry does now. Your reply is an example of answering questions on cryonics with general unrelated speculation and a side order of reversing the burden of proof. To be clear: do you know of any scientific evidence that what cryonics does right now is any good at all? - David Gerard (talk) 16:12, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Not every cryonics case is the same. Are you asking about extreme sub-ideal cases, mildly sub-ideal cases, or ideal cases? The arguments for all of these are different. Trying to answer such a broad question is like trying to nail jello to a wall. Luke (talk) 16:32, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

What does this mean?

"CI Members interested in contracting for standby and stabilization do so with Suspended Animation."

What is SA? ħuman 06:31, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

They are a company that comes in and does the nasty business of waiting by your bedside for you to die, then pumping you full of cryoprotectants while you get cooled down. Tremendously expensive, and definitely the hardest part of cryonics. (Alcor throws this into the deal, which is one reason they are so much more expensive than CI.) Luke (talk) 06:47, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a cagefight to me between two businesses. ħuman 07:07, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

My impression is they're generally pretty amiable, but they have slightly different philosophies and priorities. From what I've heard Alcor is more conservative where money is concerned, putting more aside into the patient care trust for example (by charging more). Also, Alcor contracts with SA for their remote cases I believe. But really your best bet is to move to a hospice near to the cryo company before you die so they don't have to try and transport all the equipment, personnel, etc. hundreds of miles at the last minute. Luke (talk) 07:39, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

So SA is another cryo company? I think my best bet is to go to a hospice near my loved ones, and then donate my organs to living humans instead of trying to propagate my ego. But that's just me, and thanks for the answer. ħuman 07:49, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I was referring to the best bet for survival. If you have other goals, more power to you. If you're an organ donor, that's great. (Note that death of old age may not be the best way to save lives that way, you'd likely save more lives by dying young of a traumatic blow to the head like most other successful donors do.) Luke (talk) 14:08, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Obviously (young vs. old donor), but accidents do happen, and the only organs I doubt would be worth recycling in my body are the lungs and liver. Most of the other stuff is probably good for another 30 years or so, barring huge advances in medicine I could make up to get them to run another 100 years or more. ħuman 00:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Pseudoscience Alert

Goonie just rubber-stamped this entire topic as pseudoscience. That's painting with a rather broad brush, isn't it? Luke (talk) 17:02, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

"Pseudotechnology" is closer to the mark, I think. It claims there will be a technology, it's marketed as being a prospective technology, there is no evidence whatsoever that any such claims can ever come true and considerable doubt - David Gerard (talk) 18:18, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Are you referring to ideal cases here when you say "no evidence whatsoever"? Luke (talk) 19:46, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Our Pseudoscience article lists a number of characteristics of pseudoscience. A subject would not necessarily need to check all the pseudoscience boxes - but it certainly would need some of them. Does this subject, in fact, conform to our definition of pseudoscience? I ask 'cause I don't know. (Perhaps we could identify which ones in the article?) --Bob^{It's windy!} 21:02, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

No evidence that isn't pure speculation that evidence might one day exist. What is the existing evidence that current cryonic methods actually do what they claim, i.e. preserve the mind of the subject? Note the evidence against such an assertion, outlined repeatedly - David Gerard (talk) 22:31, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

If it's all so damn scientific I don't see why they don't just train a rat, turn it into glass, revive it, and see if it retains its training? ħuman 01:15, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

(EC)I think we hashed over this before and concluded that pseudoscience definitely wasn't the right term. Based on Bob's question, cryonics only really satisfies the first thing: "Vague and/or exaggerated claims and ambiguous language". The claims are certainly exaggerated and peddle false hope, and the ambiguity comes in when people say "nanotechnology" as an answer to how you'd actually revive people (this might also tick the box for "misuse of scientific terms"). I don't think this justifies the pseudoscience category at all. ^theist 13:29, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate your candor here. "Vague claims" does sound perhaps somewhat valid. At least, what people assume is claimed (and is perhaps claimed implicitly?) is not supportable, i.e. that people will indeed be revived in the future. I think the only actual claim is that there is a chance of people being revived in the future. The trouble is that people are evaluating on a gut level and it may motivate them to sign up on similar logic to the chance of winning the lottery. That's probably the best criticism -- but I don't think it qualifies it as pseudoscience.

I think we need more discussion on the nanotech aspect, probably on a different page. I am not quite satisfied with your statements earlier regarding the non-feasibility of molecular machines sufficient to repair nonfunctional cells or severed dendrites. I am well aware of the fact that "nanotech" is an incredibly vague term (i.e. "technology that happens to involve nanoscales") that also gets applied to technologies that are (by comparison to what we're talking about) very primitive.

It should be noted that biotech or "wet nanotech" has been discussed as a potential repair mechanism. Repairing biological damage is something that happens in living creatures quite frequently already, so my gut feeling here is that usable mechanisms are likely to be available already in nature which can be exploited, particularly in cases of ideal brain vitrification. Luke (talk) 16:07, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Before you were just saying "nanobots!" and clearly not understanding what that meant. Is this a change of mind, or are you claiming to talk about the same thing you were talking about before? - David Gerard (talk) 18:56, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

You missed the element of humor. I apologize for not adding a ROTFLOL. The joke was that proteins and viruses are already "nanobots". It's a vague term just as "nanotech" is. There is a spectrum of technical difficulty, which may end up being what makes the difference between recoverable and irrecoverable case. The less damage the more likely recovery would be, even given indefinite time for technological advance. But at present our knowledge of what is/isn't technologically reasonable is rather limited. Luke (talk) 01:21, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

"Note the evidence against such an assertion, outlined repeatedly" Can you be a little more specific, maybe? Luke (talk) 02:44, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

The dendrites breaking into frozen mush. (Even in vitrification rather than crystalline freezing.) The theoretical impossibility of scanning down to the 5nm scale to work out which dendrites to fix and which goes where at what strength (the photons needed to resolve to that scale being high enough energy to knock atoms out of place). That's two, there are others.

Now, quit your stalling. What is the scientific evidence that what cryonics does now does any good at all? Does it preserve a mind? Is there any evidence it even might, beyond saying "we'll freeze vitrify and hope magic will be invented to make it better"? What is the evidence that cryonics isn't just relying on cargo-cult science? - David Gerard (talk) 18:56, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Cracking is not the same as mush. We're talking about a solid-state structure with mathematically simple two dimensional cracks. Only a few thousand of them. [8] As long as low temperatures are maintained, they are not going to be moving far. Luke (talk) 01:21, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Nobody knows or claims to know that it does any good at all. You're fighting straw. There is not some huge ethical problem with acting on speculation, provided no one gets hurt. Luke (talk) 01:21, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Pseudoscience seems incorrect. If it is pseudoscience are all the scientists that signed "Scientists' Open Letter on Cryonics" also pseudoscientists? http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2Osna5/www.imminst.org/cryonics_letter/ Can we agree to remove the pseudoscience box at the top? T.theodorus ibrahim (talk) 13:20, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Pseudotechnology does seem closer to the mark, but not by much. The first part of the cryonics procedure achieves exactly what it claims. It's the second part in the future that might be pseudotechnology :-) T.theodorus ibrahim (talk) 13:26, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

No, the first part does not achieve exactly what it claims - there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that it preserves a mind in any way at all by freezing. Do not be fooled by pseudotechnological claims that sound plausible - David Gerard (talk) 18:52, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Who is claiming that it preserves the mind? Speculation is not claims. Luke (talk) 01:21, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Cryonicists. If it doesn't preserve the "mind" what's the point? ħuman 03:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

The point is to have done what is in our power to do in the right direction, no more and no less. Luke (talk) 01:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Cryonics advocates claim it is to preserve the mind. (You really are just taking the piss now. I'd hope other cryonics advocates are less blatantly dishonest, though Ben Best doesn't augur well.) Is there any evidence whatsoever that it does this? - David Gerard (talk) 13:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Cryonics is indeed an attempt to preserve the mind. You're just mixing things up. Luke (talk) 01:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Just to bring this back to the question "Is this pseudoscience" - if it doesn't fit the description of pseudoscience in our pseudoscience article then either our article is wrong or this is not "pseudoscience". "Wrong" is not the same as "pseudoscience", "no evidence" is not the same as "pseudoscience". I could claim that I was Napoleon. I would be be wrong and there would be no evidence to support my position - but it would not be "pseudoscience". Nuts yes. Pseudoscience no.--Bob^{It's windy!} 19:12, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. Pseudotechnology, certainly. Pseudomedicine (quackery), definitely (they're selling this thing they literally have no idea how to do as a "medical procedure"). But not quite pseudoscience. - David Gerard (talk) 21:46, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Subject to the assumption that cryonics can possibly save lives, why is it unreasonable to consider it a medical procedure? You are failing to take context into account (again). If they claimed that it fit the standard definition of a medical procedure, or that their patients are alive by standard definitions that would be one thing. The mere use of terms "alive" and "medical procedure" does not prove they are deceiving anyone. All you are doing is attacking labels with labels rather than actually addressing anything of substance. Luke (talk) 01:21, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Naw, sorry "The mere use of terms "alive" and "medical procedure" does not prove they are deceiving anyone." That's just called "lying" and since they are doing it to get money, they are criminals. Calling it "pseudoscience" is gentle, really. Yeah, they are lying about science, technology, and medicine. They are con artists, liars. They have no idea how to finish their "process" but they /you claim the magical solutions are "bound to happen" given enough time. Fucking liars is all they are, liars and woomeisters conning people for their money. ħuman 06:56, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

You're just confused. Luke (talk) 01:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Cryonics supporters: here is the fundamental problem with the procedure you support. It has to be 100% reliable in order to bring a person back by any means at all; otherwise, the critical part, the brain tissue, will be useless. We cannot do anything resembling a perfect job on anything above the cell level, and those bodies that are frozen now are quite unlikely to be in any shape to be put back together, not to mention the Hail Mary aspect of assuming there will be technology to revive the bodies that were frozen after life processes had largely ceased. The whole thing is, at best, self-delusion from start to finish. The experiment in the 80s with Miles the beagle proved that suspended animation for humans may be possible, but cryonics is a completely different story. EVDebs (talk) 08:40, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

It has to be sufficiently reliable. It is not an all or nothing conjecture. Reanimation with 95% or 5% of the same memories is an improvement over non-reanimation. Luke (talk) 01:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It appears agreed pseudoscience may not be an entirely appropriate description of cryonics. T.theodorus ibrahim (talk) 19:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's what I'd call "agreed" since a few of us think it is, indeed, PS. But the PT category is there at least. I think I'm going to include the PS category without the gaudy banner though. ħuman 00:33, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I think it is safe to say many people think Cryonics is pseudoscience, so I have no problem including this as search criteria. Luke (talk) 01:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

David Gerard's statement

David Gerard's statement "there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that it preserves a mind in any way at all" might be incorrect.

See for example http://www.21cm.com/pdfs/hippo_published.pdf T.theodorus ibrahim (talk) 19:05, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is something we discussed previously. All they're doing is trying to preserve brain tissue. That says nothing about preserving a mind, which is a complex emergent phenomena that relies on both the brain and the brain being in operation to appear. Without freezing a whole brain, preserving it and then reactivating it (which hasn't been done or we'd know about it) there's no evidence about preserving a mind. ^theist 19:16, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Armondikov :-). I'll take a look at what was discussed before T.theodorus ibrahim (talk) 19:20, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

To be fair, if they can preserve dendrite interconnections, they're a bit of the way there (another step on the thousand mile journey). Have cryonicists even attempted to measure how well they're preserving these? - David Gerard (talk) 10:46, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Freezing and waiting for a miracle is not preservation of anything. The claim (insofar as it can be nailed down - see LParrish's weaseling about even this basic claim above) is that freezing the brain will allow restoration of the person by recovering the information in the mind, with side-claims of growing a new body. There is no evidence the information in brains - dendrite connections and their strengths - is preserved by freezing, and some evidence they are in fact trashed. James Bedford's brain is almost certainly frozen cell mush by now, but there's no evidence they're doing any better with more recent customers - David Gerard (talk) 10:45, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

All we can say for certain on this question is that small mammals, rats and mice, can remember how to run mazes that they learned in the days before they were frozen. We have no idea whether any portion of their personalities, whatever that means for small mammals, is preserved or not. However, we do know that the West is far behind Japan and possibly China in amorphous ice production ("vitrification") which biologists agree is necessary for preservation of transplant organs. 99.191.72.188 (talk) 06:33, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

A citation for that claim would be nice. ħuman 01:26, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Improving the article

Someone pointed me to this article about cryonics. Seeing that the wiki is named the "rational wiki", I thought it would contain a scientific/rational view of the current state of cryonics and perhaps rationally detail the challenges that remain in order for cryonics to work. This does not seem to be the case. At best, it reads more like an article created to convince people that cryonics is quackery, or at worst to bash cryonicists as much as possible. Everyone is of course entitled to state their opinions, but these should be appropriately acknowledged in the effort of creating a scholarly article.

I have gone through the article in order to suggest improvements including:

1. Removing the many ad hominem attacks, veiled or otherwise. 2. Citing scientific sources instead of blogs or videos with mere opinions. 3. Removing the many logical non sequiturs. 4. Using appropriate scientific terminology. 5. Using up-to-date references (many are years if not decades old). 6. Properly identifying the opinions of the author as opinions of the author.

I would be more detailed and just start listing the suggested improvements but I do not want to waste my time. If this wiki and this article in particular is meant to be a persuasive in nature (as it seems) and not rational, then there is no point in assisting.

Justin Loew ^{— Unsigned, by: 71.89.50.189 / talk / contribs}

You bring up many interesting points. In general, though, the wiki is written in SPOV and is devoted to refuting the anti-science movement, which is the reason for most of the article's tone and content. I do agree about sources, though, and I think that some scholarly articles would certainly help improve the article significantly. There is a more opinionated essay on cryonics here, which you may also be interested in reading. Tetronian ^{you're clueless} 17:53, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

"At best, it reads more like an article created to convince people that cryonics is quackery." Could be because cryonics is quackery. Please direct me to peer-reviewed studies in the standard medical and science journals that suggest otherwise. TheoryOfPractice (talk) 17:55, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I was unfamiliar with SPOV. Thanks for pointing this out Tetronian. I was misled by the "rational" term of the Rational Wiki. Seeing as the purpose of this article is to present an opinion, then I suppose it can stand as is and be evaluated as such. (Justin)

To TheoryofPractice, there is no known human data of reversible cryonpreservation that I am aware of. Does this make it quackery? If so, then research into "curing" Alzheimer's would also be considered quackery (by your definition) being that there is no peer reviewed studies in the standard medical and science journals that Alzheimer's has ever been "cured". The Upis beetle can be frozen down to -100 F and revived. That is enough evidence for me that human cryopreservation is within the ream of possible and enough that I would like to see more research into the field. I think it is an exciting and very challenging engineering effort. (Justin)

I'm all in favor of research, but not if that involves taking money from people in exchange for what are most likely empty promises. --⁠ (talk) 19:43, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Interesting use of the phrase "most likely". How do you assess that probability? 86.138.133.95 (talk) 20:15, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Lack of any evidence to the contrary, probably. No resurrection technique is known or proposed. And by "proposed" I don't mean "one day we will be able to do anything!! It is also, due to lack of resurrection method, completely unknown if the cryonics approach is the appropriate method of preservation. I hope you read my essay that was linked above. ħuman 01:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I read your essay, and liked it. Unlike the main article, it does identify the opinions as those of the author, and doesn't attempt to cram that opinion down the reader's throat.

As to whether or not cryonics is the best available method of information preservation, that's actually a really good question with really good answers if you're willing to take the trouble to educate yourself on the topic. For example, preserving in formaldehyde is nice (it does preserve information) but there are good scientific reasons to think it is less nice than vitrifying. Luke (talk) 23:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

But until the resurrection method exists there's no way of knowing the way the information is being preserved is at all useful. I "saved" a few computer programs I wrote in 1974 - and I still have the paper tape. Not really a good analogy, I just wanted to talk about using punch tape as a backup or transport mechanism. I do recall that none of our efforts to "read" our tapes ever worked, but the tty might have been borked. ħuman 23:51, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Glad you liked my essay, by the way, thanks. ħuman 00:06, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

"rationally detail the challenges that remain in order for cryonics to work" - it does that. They are enormous, not trivial. ħuman 01:40, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

That sort of statement relies on point of view assumptions. An elephant is enormous, but not in comparison to a planet. A mouse is enormous compared to a microbe. We can perhaps agree that the challenges appear enormous, not trivial, to anyone literate about current (but not future) science. But for all we actually know, it's entirely possible that the problems are trivial by the standards of future technology and science. Luke (talk) 23:39, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

True, but that argument makes characterizing them in any way "forbidden". Compared to the idea of putting a man on the Moon in 1962, they are as an elephant to a microbe. All Apollo required was a huge investment in technology - the science was basically known and sound, it just had to be executed. ħuman 23:51, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Ben Best considers I can't read his own words

• Ben Best's paper (cut'n'pasted directly from the PDF): "The formerly vitrified transplant functioned well enough as the sole kidney to keep the rabbit alive indefinitely."
• Ben Best's edit: [9]

You are correct about this, David, and I owe you an apology. When I wrote my paper in 2007 I misinterpreted the results, citing an oral report given at a conference. The kidney study was not actually published until 2009 (in ORGANOGENESIS), and it clearly states that the rabbit was only sustained a few days. I had forgotten that what I had originally written was incorrect. You can use this to discredit everything else that I have had to say if you like, but anyone who seriously investigates my references will find that this mistake is an exception rather than the rule. Not to be forgotten, however, is that this kidney work was a major breakthrough for organ vitrification research, and shows the power of vitrification (rather than freezing) to cryopreserve at cryogenic temperatures. --BenBest (talk) 17:37, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I should add that your errors in interpretation of cited papers have also been considerable. I just corrected your comment about the ovary vitrification paper in the Organs section, and formerly had to cite table 1 concerning your misinterpretation of the hippocampus paper. You should read these papers before making such comments as you have made. --BenBest (talk) 17:58, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

I had not been planning to post here again, but I feel obliged to correct my correction. A careful reading of the ORGANOGENISIS paper shows that my 2007 citation of the 2005 conference report in which I said "The formerly vitrified transplant functioned well enough as the sole kidney to keep the rabbit alive indefinitely" was indeed correct. Based on David's comment, I skimmed the ORGANOGENESIS paper and wrongly concluded that a vitrified kidney could only sustain a rabbit for 9 days. It is true that one rabbit only survived for 9 days, but another rabbit survived much longer. To quote from page 169 of the ORGANOGENESIS paper: "After ensuring that the animal appeared capable of living indefinitely using the vitrified kidney as the sole renal support, it was euthanized for histological follow-up on day 48." So my original statement based on the 2005 conference report that I cited was correct, and my retraction was a mistake. --BenBest (talk) 17:36, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent illustration of why scientists can't be found who can be bothered going through Mr Best's paper to do a line-by-line rebuttal of it, and why scientists in general don't take cryonics sufficiently seriously to give it the detailed demolition it would otherwise warrant - David Gerard (talk) 14:50, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Why so, exactly? Oh, and I have a meta-comment - although we don't have any technical "ban" on it, I don't think a person editing our commentary on them is very good form. (It would be right out at wikipedia, for instance) Perhaps better to point out disagreements or desired additions on the talk page and let others discuss and add/delete/improve the article. ħuman 20:25, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Because he is either intellectually dishonest or behaves indistinguishably from someone who is, per the evidence here as well as his ludicrous green ink PDF. And yes, writing about himself in the third person as if someone else is talking about him is distinctly dubious and does him no favours either. "Ben Best is a transcendent genius whose perceptions and ability to accurately convey the content of his references is unparalleled - Ben Best" lacks a certain credibility - someone really needs to seriously rewrite his recent contributions. (I'll leave it to someone else.) - David Gerard (talk) 23:04, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

His edits are the last four or so diffs, so I think I might be lazy and just revert them. ħuman 01:41, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I just rolled 'em back. Where is that "BB is a genius" quote from? ħuman 01:45, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

On what grounds did you revert my edits, Human? Do you think that what David wrote is true and that what I wrote is false? Have you read the original articles? The citations that I gave were sufficient to establish that David misinterpreted both of them. Is this wiki about truth or is it about defending the prejudices of skeptics? From your essay I had thought that you were an honest person seeking truth. --BenBest (talk) 21:01, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Presumably on the grounds that self-aggrandisement is unconvincing - David Gerard (talk) 00:42, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Self aggrandizement? I haven't seen this. Ben's edits look entirely fact-oriented. You on the other hand seem to care about nothing except reputation points and your own subjective impressions of things. Your whole "self-aggrandizing" version of Best is yet another fictional straw man you've invented for your own amusement. Luke (talk) 03:46, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I beg to disagree. Ben is very full of himself. And his edits were to edit what he says he says. Ugly. ħuman 05:05, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Whether I am full of myself or not should be secondary to truth content. You are elevating your emotional reactions above the level of these concerns. Are you wanting RationalWiki to be correct or would you prefer that it be incorrect as long as it supports your bias? I should hope that RationalWiki being accurate would be more important to you than whether or not I am (or you think I am) a egomanical asshole. I made edits to all three of the topics in the Organs section of the Cryonics entry. The first topic cites a paper about mouse ovaries incorrectly stating that the ovaries were frozen rather than vitrified. I corrected this, adding a link to the abstract for assistance. What is the truth? Do you care about what is true or are you more concerned about fighting with me? The second topic incorrectly states that rabbit kidneys were frozen (rather than vitrified), gives a citation that is not the up-to-date citation for the kidney experiment and correctly states that I was wrong to say that the vitrified kidney sustained the rabbit "indefinitely". I corrected the two shortcomings, while acknowledging my mistake in saying "indefinitely". If I were not concerned with the truth, I would not have acknowledged my mistake. The third topic incorrectly states that rat hippocamus slices were frozen (rather than vitrified) and denies that the slices had viable tissue, saying only that the slices "looked good". I called attention to table 1 of the paper which is the basis for the finding that the slices contained viable tissue. Did you look at table 1? Do you care about what is in table 1? Again, if you care about RationalWiki, I should hope that you would care more about whether it is accurate rather than whether a person whom you consider to be an asshole made corrections. Personality issues and emotional issues should be secondary to factual issues. --BenBest (talk) 12:03, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Link to table 1 please? Thank you. ħuman 05:09, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Here's the link: http://www.21cm.com/pdfs/hippo_published.pdf Luke (talk) 01:58, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! ħuman 02:09, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Apparently, Bun Bust funded that study. Interesting. ħuman 06:30, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

You know, the quaint misspellings don't exactly convey the sense of rational skepticism that you seem to think they do. They come across to me as cheap shots aimed to distract rather than engage. Can you please cite your source about the funding? I didn't see any mentions of CI or Best within the article itself. Luke (talk) 14:55, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree that the edit did not look as good coming directly from Ben as it would coming from someone else. But I don't agree that the changes were reflective of actual egomania or deception. I would need to see more convincing evidence of that. If the actual content is not in dispute, I will re-add it myself. Luke (talk) 15:57, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I've re-added the disputed content, and tried to make it fit the context more smoothly. Luke (talk) 04:09, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I assume you can back it all up personally, on more grounds than "Ben Best says so." By the way, since you're editing on scientific evidence - where's the scientific evidence that anything cryonics does now preserves any information whatsoever? I keep asking and you keep dodging - David Gerard (talk) 16:10, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I just tried to make the page more accurately reflect the actual statements of the sources in question. If you think any of the changes make it less consistent, let me know. Thanks. Luke (talk) 16:35, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

It's my wittily extreme talk-page-quality opinion of his transcendent editing - David Gerard (talk) 23:14, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah, ok. I thought I read it on his web site somewhere... ;) ħuman 00:44, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Connected?

I know there's been a lot of activity on this page and have no desire to be caught in the crossfire so I'll just drop this link for information. Sssh^Sssh 14:45, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Cover story {sticky}

(please do not archive this section)

Goonie silvered this article, and I agree. I also think it may only be a few tweaks and proofreading or two from "gold", ie, coverstory status. ħuman 08:13, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Definitely. Although for my money I like them to have more illustration, so if we can port over some CC images from the Wikipedia counterpart or similar. But yes, some proof-reading, there's parts of it I haven't gone over or checked out too thoroughly. ^theist 08:17, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

It's not really an image-hungry topic, we have one or two, isn't that enough? I've seen great articles on WP that had no images at all (not that we are WP in any way of course, but you get the point). ħuman 08:50, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

IMO it needs a bit more work before it's cover, or entirely silver. The large external links section needs digestion. Also needs more words on why it's so hard to find any proper scientist who will look seriously at Ben Best's green ink PDF (apart from the obvious) - cryonics does need some serious sceptical attention, and so far we're the best there is, which is sorta whut? Ben Best's paper needs a side-by-side article, but we need interest from people of considerably greater expertise than we have casually to hand - David Gerard (talk) 12:18, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

True, but I think that once all that stuff has been accomplished, this article would be a good one for a cover story. Even in its current state, this article is pretty good, IMO. Lord Goonie ^{Hooray! I'm helping!} 16:44, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Cover worthiness

A huge research project to map out the holes in Best's paper would be nice, but realistically I'm never going to get around to it and neither are you.

So. What else does this need for the cover? - David Gerard (talk) 22:38, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Give me a day or two to parse through it, and I'll let you know what I think of it. It is certainly a good article, but I need time to go through it with a fine-toothed comb before I give it cover story blessing, as those articles should be flawless. Lord Goonie ^{Hooray! I'm helping!} 23:38, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I've finished proofreading this article. It has my vote for cover. Gooniepunk2010 ^{Oi! Oi! Oi!} 03:36, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Any other objections? Is this thing actually pretty much ready? - David Gerard (talk) 12:22, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

This page is Crundy approved!!

Looks good. Crundy^{Talk nerdy to me} 20:31, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I think it's pushing things a bit. There's a lot of fluffy writing and weak phrasing in parts of it still. I just made like 12 edits just trying to turn sentences into reasonably clear presentations of what they mean. I'm not arguing for de-covering, but this thing really needs some attention. Also, I swore the next time I read "apes with pretensions" I was going to permanently destroy the pixels that displayed them on my screen. It was amusing, mildly, the first two times. It has so little meaning, though, that past the first chuckle, oh well. Anyway, calling all proofreaders/copyeditors! ħuman 04:34, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Thar she blows! - David Gerard (talk) 22:57, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Scientists' Letter on Cryonics

People saying it's not impossible, with references that may be useful for the article: http://www.imminst.org/cryonics_letter/ - David Gerard (talk) 18:55, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

While some of those people look they might be real "independent scientists", that list is stuffed with people who aren't. A quick had it running about 75% people who look like "insiders". ħuman 22:18, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Mind you, there's about 100% more chance that there are actual scientists that we would recognise as scientists involved than when creationists try much the same ;-) I'm more interested in it for the list of references, which might supply better support than Ben Best's PDF. Though that's listed too, so I'm not holding out much hope - David Gerard (talk) 22:57, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Also note the number of engineers - David Gerard (talk) 23:02, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh noooooooo... ħuman 23:40, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

side-by-side

Making it side-by-side would possibly be a good idea, but the text as is doesn't fit neatly into "problem" and "solution". Also, that list was pretty much compiled here on the talk page - the section isn't fisking someone else's text - David Gerard (talk) 12:27, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Degradation of neural networks

The stroke comparison may not be as bad as stated. It occurs to me that if neurons were degraded in recovery from cryonics, the degradation would be more uniform and random than in a stroke, where a single area is taken out in a hit. In neurocomputing, I understand that networks are rather more robust to losing a random 1% of their neurons than losing a contiguous chunk of them - does anyone have references on the topic? - David Gerard (talk) 16:03, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

This article is apparently the best critical page available

Reused here. Link at bottom, tho' no CC by-sa. The site itself is barely literate, and painful to read - David Gerard (talk) 01:09, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Hmmmmm, schweet! I loves it when people read our articles as resources. Gooniepunk2010 ^{Oi! Oi! Oi!} 01:26, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I think we need to demand the proper copyright notices or that they take it down. ħuman 01:35, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, I think we need to do so ASAP. I didn't write much of that, but I edited it, and I did not give them permission to steal my work uncredited. ħuman 01:41, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I thought good publicity was good.--Centimeter_INCHES 01:43, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Indeed it is. But theft of intellectual property is a crime. Sure, they link to us, in the middle of the bottom, but they don't credit us with writing their website for them. ħuman 01:48, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I sent kind email explaining that they need to handle it properly. Not that I know exactly what that means, but credit for copied text is pretty basic, I think. ħuman 01:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I hope you used nice easy words, because the (apparent) author, one "!Jill Pleasuremodel", does not seem to speak English very well.--Centimeter_INCHES 01:56, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

It's links like these that Ken

so desperately wants and epically fails to get. AceX-102 01:59, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Nice one Ace! ħuman 02:09, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Now linked back at top and bottom and CC by-sa noted - David Gerard (talk) 22:37, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. I thought they would want to "do it right". ħuman 03:52, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Not relevant

But there's now a prog on BBC2 about low temperature surgical operations. Just sayin' 20:04, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Cryonics Meets Medicine

http://cryomedical.blogspot.com/ - Melody Maxim has been really pissing cryonicists off by pointing out the blithering incompetence of the people handling the corpses, and the quackery of Alcor calling people with no medical qualifications whatsoever "surgeons". Note Quackwatch quote at top of blog. Still in search of the cryonicist cultural list of reasons she is evil and stupid and incorrect - David Gerard (talk) 06:57, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Probably not article-worthy...

...but that Mitchell and Webb Look make fun of the topic. I saw it at the end of one section, beginning of another, then searched for M & W L/cryonics, this better be right. I loved the guy with "fluids" leaking out of holes in his body, also the guy trying to re-freeze himself. ħuman 07:40, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Basically

You cannot be frozen until you are dead.

Therefore you are dead but frozen.

Therefore cryonics is an expensive fraud (and the dead can neither sue nor be sued).

(Cryonics for freezing tissue for future use given immediate medical/other activities is another matter)

82.198.250.66 (talk) 16:27, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Not quite. "And there is no known way even in theory to get from dead but frozen to alive again. There is, however, speculation that there will be a theory." And I would not say "fraud" as that implies intent, but "wtf stupid" - David Gerard (talk) 16:54, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

"Frozen", "dead", and "expensive" are all distortions. Cryonics patients are vitrified (if and when physically possible). They are dead at this point only by clinical terms, not information-theoretic terms (or even more modest neurologically based terms). Furthermore, cryonics is less expensive than a lot of frivolities people could do without, e.g. a smoking habit. Luke (talk) 01:29, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Respect for human remains

"These are human remains. They deserve at least as much respect as ashes in urns" which is... how much? ħuman 00:03, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Plenty. Even most hard boiled atheist skeptics would disagree with paving over a cemetery and building a condo on it, flushing human ashes down the toilet, or dumping their dead mother in a bin on the curb to be pick up along with the rest of the household garbage. Referring to it as "meat in a freezer" just detracts from the credibility of the article, and is plain insensitive.89.17.127.138 (talk) 04:26, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Citation needed. A quick poll of "everyone I know who is on an IM client right now" reveals that nobody particularly cares about funerals or corpses, sanitation issues aside. As for the quote itself, it's a bit silly, but the replacement implies that what they're doing in the photo is "preparation" of some sort; seems misleading if cryonics don't do anything. ~ Kupochama^[1][2] 05:59, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Speaking as a "hard boiled atheist skeptic", bollocks, BON. A dead body is just that, a lump of matter which will shortly be consumed either by bacteria or fire. You can throw my corpse in the nearest river or leave it out for the foxes. 06:20, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

"Preparation" is a neutral term, just like morticians "prepare" bodies today. If it really rankles you, you could use the term "working on". As for dumping your dead mother's corpse in the trash bin, why don't you ask around at work how people would feel about that. But hey, if you want to put that in the article, be my guest. It would only serve to undermine it in the eyes of most readers. 89.17.127.138 (talk) 06:41, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Both terms are literally accurate, but (imho etc) bear the minor implication of the acts having some meaningful effect, which would rather contradict the article. Personally I'd prefer to base it on the original, perhaps without the whole "here lies" joke on the end. As for asking around at work, this site is a bit more secular than most lunch break discussions. ~ Kupochama^[1][2] 06:55, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Also is moving goalposts: people at work =/= hard boiled atheist skeptics. 06:59, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The acts do have a meaningful effect, at the very least they preserve the body (but maybe not the mind) just like morticians do. As an atheist, even if I saw a picture of a priest getting ready for communion, an accurate caption would be "Priest preparing for ritual." Furthermore, the original caption was not accurate, as Cryonics believers certainly do not see themselves as "playing" when dealing with cadavers. As for the goal posts, fine: we don't have studies either way. But I still contend that if you think most skeptics would be in favor of throwing their dead mothers in with the weekly garbage pickup, you're hanging out with a very small subset of extremist thinkers. I'd be willing to take as evidence a direct poll with this question at large skeptics' meeting. 89.17.127.138 (talk) 07:33, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Ascertaining a viewpoint of yours to "most hard boiled atheist skeptics" is ridiculous, especially considering the ones here that have chimed in completely contradict your foolishness. Dead meat is dead meat. ħuman 04:38, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

The "playing" was an allusion to the Church of Scientology trying to slander Keith Henson for being a cryonicist. CoS: "Keith Henson plays with dead bodies!" Everyone else: "Scientology drives dying bodies past hospitals!" And an allusion to the general squick value of cryonics (something I don't care about, but a reaction cryonicists I've argued with over it seem convinced I have). It's probably too obscure. Oh well - David Gerard (talk) 17:44, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

The differences between Cryonics and Scientology might be an interesting article in its own right, particularly from your perspective. When you mentioned that many of the Rick Ross posters were involved in the Scientology war, it helped me empathize with them as possibly something more than paranoid freaks (which is how they seemed to me before). It is really scary to think of them as basically sincere, honest individuals who think they are doing a good thing. Perhaps you could defuse things a bit by contrasting the two? Luke (talk) 06:13, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Charles Platt gets pessimistic

Cryonicist (and SF author) Charles Platt writes a reality check article that is rejected from Cryonics by the board of Alcor: [10] [11] Anyone want to digest it into the article in a useful fashion? (i.e. not sure when I will) - David Gerard (talk) 18:32, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

And Luke promptly responds elsewhere, not linking to what inspired him - David Gerard (talk) 18:53, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Why do think "Cryonicist (and SF author)" is redundant? ħuman 04:23, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

My LW post was not intended as a direct response. It was, as stated, "something of" a response. As in, Charles said something about optimism and I afterward said something contrary about pessimism. That's a rather tangential sort of relationship, however (contrary to the above statement) I did in fact add links to the two messages for anyone curious -- right after you brought up the notion in the comments section. His main points regarding the financing of Alcor were not addressed, as that was not related to the premise I was interested in writing about. Luke (talk) 05:55, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Interestingly, there has been a recent bequest of $7M to Alcor. Rather than allot any of it directly towards Alcor operations (where there might be the temptation to waste it) they are putting half of it into the Patient Care Trust (a separate legal entity which is responsible strictly for the patients and assets necessary to care for them), and half into an endowment fund, from which the interest will go to Alcor operations. Patient care costs have been hiked from $180k to $200k for full body patient. Luke (talk) 05:55, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Paying for revival

How will the revival of cryonics patients be paid for (once the technology becomes available)? Do any of the cryonics companies even give any thought to this?

Are the fees paid supposed to be invested to generate the money for revival? Are there sufficient precedents in contract law that would keep money invested by somebody who's legally dead from being touched by their heirs (who probably would rather be rich than spend it to revive a 10x-great-grandparent they've never met), or appropriated by the company they've invested it with?

Are there typically any guarantees in cryonics contracts that mandate an effort be made to revive the patient when the technology develops (and again, how enforceable is a contract with a dead person)?

Or do cryonics advocates just assume a post-scarcity economy where revival will be so cheap that people can revive the corpsicles for the hell of it? Given the level of technology needed for cryonic revival, maybe a post-scarcity economy is a reasonable assumption. If immortality is readily available to anybody (and it would need to be if reviving cryonics patients is possible and cheap enough to do without the patient having prepaid), presumably there would be limits on population. You can't have immortals reproducing willy-nilly. Why would dead people be in line for revival when presumably many of the living would like the (rare) opportunity to have children of their own?

Obviously there's a lot of problems with cryonics. But I haven't seen that cryonic advocates are even addressing the why (resurrect the dead) or the how (financial) of revival assuming it were to become possible. Do they consider this? ^{— Unsigned, by: 192.104.39.2 / talk / contribs}

Hello. My guess is that the cryonics promoters don't care whether or not you are revived. They just want your money now, and maybe, MAYBE, they'll revive you if such a thing ever becomes possible. Lord Goonie ^{Hooray! I'm helping!} 21:27, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I've never thought of it that way. But I imagine that since the tech is so far of, if it's even possible, you can bet that the people who are put in the fridge now, probably won't be revived any time earlier than the ones frozen later. A methodology dependent technique like this certainly can't operate "first-come, first-serve". ^theist 21:34, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I really don't think they're in it for the money. The people involved are utterly sincere fanatics and running a cryonics facility is not a money machine - they're charities teetering on the brink of brokeness. I'm sure there's endless cryonicist guff answering BoN's question, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're just preserving^{[citation NOT needed]} everyone they can in the hope that revival will be cheap enough to bother with for the sake of it eventually. This article focuses on the science problems, and it's (frighteningly) the best article on the subject on the Internet - everything else is advocacy or ignoring them - David Gerard (talk) 22:20, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

This does seem to be the best article out there. And it sounds like as far as all of you are aware that the hope is simply that revival will be so cheap that cost won't be an issue. Hmm. I'm pretty sure population will be a huge issue in that world. Thanks. ^{— Unsigned, by: 192.104.39.2 / talk / contribs} 22:21, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Based on this premise, they might expect we'll be shooting excess people into space (at planets/stations/wars/etc) by then. That seems to be the main sci-fi expansion mechanism, anyway. ~ Kupochama^[1][2] 22:36, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Hell, if cryonics works in both the modulation and demodulation modes, there's no need to resurrect the corpsicles on Earth at all. Send them to other nearby stars to look for planets, they won't get bored or claustrophobic, or require any food or water for the trip. Hell, we should start sending them now, and let our alien overlords resurrect them with their alien overlord technology. ħuman 01:24, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Speaking of that, we've sent out probes with random scrawls on in the event they get picked up by aliens, but what about actually sending a preserved body out on one of them too? Who knows, we could have a go at panspermia while we're at it! ^theist 17:40, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes it has been thought of. Alcor sets aside a fairly large amount for future use. Luke (talk) 08:22, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Wow, look at Luke go

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/ray_kurzweil_does_not_understa.php - search through on the word "cryonics". The burden of proof is negative - David Gerard (talk) 22:41, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Nice one. I stubbed up Ray Kurzweil. ħuman 03:48, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

http://essentialmeat.blogspot.com/ - wonder if this is our Luke. Grasp of convincing argument is reminiscent. Dig the phrase "anti-cryonics cranks" - I bet PJR is kicking himself for not thinking of "evolution cranks" - David Gerard (talk) 22:36, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Not every critic of cryonics is a crank. Most are. It depends on how you criticize it. As a crude analogy, consider the probability that a given critic of, say, special relativity is a crank. The reason the probability is so high is that it takes a lot of understanding of the technical details of such a topic before one can properly criticize it. Unfortunately (given how much so many people seem to want a quick and easy knee-jerk answer) the same is true of cryonics.

Part of the problem here is that cryonics involves multiple specialties. A really competent critic would need to know at least the relevant neuroscience, cryobiology, and quite a bit about information science/math/statistics, not to mention all there is to know about what the hard limits of nanotechnology are (i.e. well enough to assign realistic probabilities).

A quick smoke-test: If someone hasn't heard of vitrification (i.e. anyone who straight facedly refers to cryonics as "corpse freezing" and the like) they probably aren't qualified to comment on this topic. Luke (talk) 07:24, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Egyptian mummies are a very poor analogy.

Cryonics might have a 1 in 10,000 chance of succeeding. It is also not provably impossible. Reviving the brains of Egyptian mummies is impossible. All the information contained in those brains is gone, as best as current science understands things. Having this comparison in there lowers the quality, scientific rigor, and impartiality of this article. ^{— Unsigned, by: 89.17.127.138 / talk / contribs} Under current scientific understanding, cryonics has a non-zero chance of succeeding. It is also not provably impossible. Reviving the brains of Egyptian mummies is impossible. All the information contained in Egyptian brains is gone. It is unknown if the information in cryonics brains is gone. This is a big difference. Having this comparison in there lowers the quality, scientific rigor, and impartiality of this article. ^{— Unsigned, by: 89.17.127.138 / talk / contribs}

We have more evidence that we understand the physical world accurately than egyptians did, and that understanding contains evidence that information is stored on physical media, that cold temperatures prevent chemical changes, and other wonderful pieces of knowledge which point in the direction of cryonics being a better approach than mummification. Certainly more of the relevant information is preserved which would need to be preserved for it to work. There is more research remaining to do to determine what sub-approaches to cryonics are better from an information-preservation standpoint. Vitrification is obviously a huge advance over freezing, but eliminating toxicity of the cryoprotective agents (and understanding the toxicity mechanisms) is the next step. There are also gains to be made in making sure perfusates reach all areas of the brain in spite of long cold ischemic times and other forms of severe brain trauma. Luke (talk) 23:53, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Mummies are a great example, as so far we can't prove that the current freezing techniques suitably preserve enough information for revival, they're in the same boat as mummies - which back in the day were essentially being preserved for the same thing, albeit with a more explicit supernatural slant. ^theist 17:38, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Isn't "as science currently understands" the whole point of Cryonics? That eventually science will understand and voila! tmtoulouse 17:39, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

It was a past attempt at a technology to gain immortality given the knowledge of the day, so is relevant. Cryonics might have a 1 in 10,000 chance of succeeding or it might have a zero chance of succeeding. (If you're going to start with probabilities of probabilities, I do expect you to show all working to ascertain your numbers.) Current science says the Egyptians were grievously wrong, but that doesn't change what they were attempting. And that is, of course, the point, even if you don't want to understand it - David Gerard (talk) 17:40, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Compare: Compound X, an experimental drug in pre-phase-1 laboratory trials, may cure cancer. Vs: This homeopathic remedy may cure cancer. No proof either will do so. But there is proof that homeopathy is bunk, whereas the drug has a (slight) chance of succeeding.

Drugs entering Phase I trails tend to have a fair amount of evidence suggesting they could work. Where is your evidence suggesting it works besides "well it could work" but you know, the sun could turn blue tomorrow... ^theist 17:49, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes indeed. However, there was not proof homeopathy was bunk when it was invented - indeed, the patients tended to do better because they were only being given water and not actively poisoned by their physicians.

The point is that a technology that was considered plausible by the knowledge of the day turned out to be obviously an utter failure to us, six thousand years later. Cryonics advocates consider cryonics plausible by the knowledge of the day, and they need evidence that their technology is not as much of an utter failure. Remember: the null hypothesis is that it does nothing; the burden of proof is to show it does something.

Of course, you can save us lots of trouble by giving the evidence that any information is actually preserved - David Gerard (talk) 17:50, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I've corrected my opening paragraph with your suggestions. Other points: I specifically said "PRE" phase-1 LABORATORY trials. In other words, speculative early trials. These compounds are very different from homeopathy. The point here is not about evidence, it's about logic. It is illogical to equate something which is currently known to be impossible, with something which is currently known to be unlikely but possible.

You've just claimed "Under current scientific understanding, cryonics has a non-zero chance of succeeding." Could you please show your working for making any statement whatsoever about the probabilities? This is a problem noted in the article in discussion with cryonics advocates - their tendency to give probabilities from no evidence whatsoever and never show their working. So you could prove the article wrong right there. Please show your working.

By the way, please don't alter text people have already responded to, particularly the words they responded to. Correct yourself afterwards if need be - David Gerard (talk) 17:59, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

If I claim that X has a 1/y chance of succeeding, I have the burden of proof. But if you claim X is impossible or has a zero chance of succeeding, you have the burden of proof. If a physicist claims "It is impossible that humans will ever live on Pluto", he has the burden of proof (even if the odds of such a thing happening are very low). So, again, if you cannot see why comparing a total shot in the dark to a known-false technique is logically invalid, I am wasting my breath and this page is a lot less rational than I thought. And the chance is non-zero because cryonics doesn't violate any known laws of physics, while reviving mummies does. ^{— Unsigned, by: 89.17.127.138 / talk / contribs}

Laws of physics isn't the problem its the laws of biology, of neuroscience, of tissue destruction do to the freezing process. How is cryonics any different from the mummy, they both destroy the brain. tmtoulouse 18:11, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Your attempts to reverse the burden of proof don't work here any better than they do on Pharyngula. We know now that the information in the pharaoh's brains is irrecoverable; they didn't know it then. If you claim a non-zero probability that the information in the corpsicle's brains is recoverable, please show your working. It can't be that hard.

And by the way, well done on no longer claiming "nanobots" will fix everything, ever since an actual nanotechnologist explained why "nanobots" are cheesy sci-fi and not even proper science fiction in robustness - David Gerard (talk) 18:16, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Also, please sign your posts. ~~~~ will do it - David Gerard (talk) 18:18, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

No idea what Pharyngula is, and I've never claimed anything about nanobots. I'm not some veteran cryo guy, I got shunted to this site by clicking a link from an unrelated conversation on Slashdot. My only interest was improving this page and moving on. And I'm sorry, but anyone claiming something is impossible has the burden of proof on them. Furthermore, most actions in life are undertaken with only educated guesses as their basis. The majority of Western medical advice is nothing but unproven educated guesses, with a sprinkle of double blind tests to back it up. Despite this, it's still light years ahead of all the other mystical healing ideas. We know that the information from a person's mind is stored physically in the brain -somehow- (unless you believe in a soul). So it stands to reason that physical preservation of this brain may yield some recoverable information. I'm quite agnostic about Cryonics. I think it's a very very long shot, improbable, but nothing about it seems impossible. On the other hand, just as there are true-believers, it seems there are true-disbelievers.

The probability is not zero as far as we currently know. The probability that the pharaohs would attain immortality is zero as far as we know, but was not zero as far as they knew. As such, claiming a probability greater than zero here appears to be a statement of personal ignorance rather than something based on knowledge. There is no evidence that any information is actually preserved by current cryonics practice - I've asked and asked and none has ever been offered. - David Gerard (talk) 18:42, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what the pharaohs thought. Our knowledge has advanced since then. Our speculations are more grounded in fact and more likely to come true (do you deny this much?). Ten years ago there was no evidence that artificial life would ever be created, but it was reasonable to speculate (based on then general scientific principles) that it would. When you're trying to predict what will happen in 10, 100 or 500 years, you have to speculate. Often you need to make decisions today based on your speculations and incomplete information. This is not unscientific, this is real life. If you ask for full, 100% evidence, before taking any actions, you never make any decisions. A dying multi-millionaire has to decide how to spend 0.1% of his fortune. Cryonics or not? Only speculation can guide his choice. A dying cancer patient has exhausted all traditional therapies. Does he go for the homeopathy remedy, the totally novel and untested but 'hypothesized to work' remedy, or do nothing? He's probably dead either way, but I'd take option two. And yes, that would be the scientific choice, even though it doesn't have any proof it will work.89.17.127.138 (talk) 19:07, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

But is there any evidence at all that there is anything to cryonics? Your whole argument relies on cryonics having some supporting evidence, something to differentiate it from pure woo. The main evidence we need is that the cryonics process preserves some sort of meaningful information in the neural structure of the brain. That would be a good start. tmtoulouse 19:09, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, but there is! A hundred years of science which strongly suggest (but do not yet prove) that the entire mind is not extra-corporeal but physical. This was *the* major hurdle. We have proof that memory formation physically alters the brain, proof that personality is not dependent on continuous electrical activity (electro shock patients aren't vegetables), proof that there is nothing magical about cells being alive/dead (cells and tiny animals can be frozen/thawed), non-invasive techniques (MRI, fMRI, electrodes controlling prostheses) that allow us to detect ("read") when certain thought patterns are expressed, etc. If the mind is "stored" physically in the brain, it stands to reason that physical preservation of this brain would yield *some* recoverable information. We can recover some sequence information from 50,000 year old decrepit DNA. It stretches the imagination that **no** information will ever be recoverable at all from reasonably well preserved brains. Humanity is far from making this, if ever, a reality. But speculation, even extremely long term speculation, is not unscientific if the proper footnotes and caveats are clearly included. There are plenty of woo and charlatans in Cryonics. But not all. And comparing the field to mummy preservation is blatantly unscientific. The argument that "The ancient Egyptians thought this and were wrong, so you might be wrong too." is exactly the argument put forth by Creationists, and other science deniers. We have progressed in the last 10,000 years. Our speculations have progressed too. 89.17.127.138 (talk) 19:35, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I am well aware about the nature of the physical brain, I have spent the last 5 years studying it as a graduate student in neuroscience. I am also aware about how important the network structure is to the storage of information. It is the connections between cells and the network of these connections that contains the information that is in our "brain." That structure is destroyed by freezing, even if the cells and tissue itself is preserved. Still no evidence that any information is preserved in the cryonics process. Without evidence it is no different then any other woo, homeopathy included. tmtoulouse 19:53, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

"Freezing?" Are you sure that is the word you intended to use? Luke (talk) 01:14, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Another point about the Egyptians: they didn't think they were preserving their bodies for future generations to regenerate them. They thought their pyramids were *actually* (right then and there) beaming their souls to the afterlife. One more reason why this is in no way comparable.

Since mice have been frozen and thawed (I didn't even know this, got it from this site) it seems obvious that some information remains. Your refusal to contrast scientific speculation with provably wrong hypotheses is disheartening from a scientific perspective. By the way, where is the proof for the statement you made? I happen to agree that the connections contain "our mind". But that's just speculation too. Science is not only about evidence, but also about hypotheses and testing. Very different from woo. The idea of the existence of the Oort cloud when it was first proposed was not the same as a teapot orbiting Venus. The idea of life on Mars today is not the same as aliens conducting anal experiments on random farmers. 89.17.127.138 (talk) 20:35, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

There is plenty of evidence that the connections and not the cellular bodies are what makes the mind. This really isn't the place to go into it, but its a hundred years of research using lesion studies, drugs, animal models, etc. Essentially, you are trying to work with the problem of demarcation between pseudoscience and science. Popper is who you would turn to then, and we are left with the problem of falsifiability. If your response to the arguments against cryonics amounts to well we may not know it now, but we will know it some day in so many thousands of years, your setting up an unfalsifiable hypothesis that can be tossed in with any other woo.

Now, the way out of this territory is to accept that observations we make today can test the cryonics prediction. If we observe the consequences of the cryonics process and if I make the prediction that it destroys the neural connections and therefore it is invalid, and you make the prediction that it preserves those connections, and we go and look at it and see those connections destroyed....well then its falsified. Unless you can present evidence that these connections are not destroyed you are left with two choices: cryonics is an unfalsifiable and can be relegated with the rest of the pseudoscience nonsense, or that there are testable predictions and all observations to date falsify it as a valid hypothesis. tmtoulouse 20:48, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

The idea of life beneath the surface of Europa won't be proven or disproven for decades (centuries?) but it's still more scientific than UFOs. Popper is an important yardstick but not the only one. There are degrees to scientific speculation and Egyptian mummies is a bad example. Furthermore, my understanding is that some/much/all of the fine structure of the brain is preserved by vitrification ( http://alcor.org/FAQs/faq02.html#fracturing ). So some information should remain. If all/most of the neural connections or fine structure were completely destroyed (as opposed to slightly damaged) it would alter my analysis of the problem. If you have peer reviewed studies proving that such is the case, post some links. 89.17.127.138 (talk) 21:18, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Heh, I was about to post asking Trent for that too ;-) As for your Europa analogy, you're comparing two things whose only similarity is we aren't sure yet. Your Alcor link uses the word "probably" to mean "it is not absolutely a violation of physics", and again they need to show their working if they really claim to assign it a probability at all, let alone over 50% - David Gerard (talk) 21:21, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

The burning topic

You've come here to read about cryonics and I know what you're asking. You're wondering: is cryonics a ... SATANIC CULT??? - David Gerard (talk) 00:46, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Styles responds. Luke (talk) 00:07, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Impossible science shown up as fraud in Scientific American, et. al

Being a former antiquarian book seller, I can't help but reflect on an order I once had for some old Scientific American magazines, and a few other similar ones. Although I can't recall the exact issues/dates, suffice to say they were around 1900, and I read some interesting stuff as i paused in my packing...

The leading scientists of the time would publish what we now call skeptics articles like the ones here, in the name of rationality and science. My personal favorite was the one where a panel of respected, mainstream, elite scientists debunked the up and coming automobile point by point as a massive fraud.

1. The human body can't go very fast, g forces would crush our insides, so, since autos would never go very fast, why bother? (Same argument was also made for trains many year previously as I recall from an English article).

2. There are no decent roads, and the amount of money needed to construct a transportation system that would allow for auto travel is so staggering as to be impossible. Without roads, why bother?

3. We already have trains. There's no need to go where there are no trains.

4. There's not enough gasoline. The world would run out of oil by the 1930's, why bother with autos?

5. Metallurgy can't produce durable enough metal at an economical price, and experts agree there is simply nothing new to discover there, so once again, autos will never happen.

You can imagine what they said about motorized flight.

And, randomly interspersed, were ads touting the safe, effective, non additive (many studies done!) cough medicine, female problem reducer, child calming properties of Heroin.

And, of course, all of it was 100% true, saying otherwise made you a member of a cult, a fool, uneducated, a crank, or all of the aforementioned.

Never looked at "rational" sites quite the same since... maybe ya'all should stick to ghosts, goblins, and the like. Black and white pronouncements about future tech seem pretty much like psychic babble to me. I'm secure enough in myself to acknowledge I have no idea what the future holds for nanotech, or any other future-distant, complex science, with one exception: I'm 100% sure you don't know, either.

I also think people have the right to whatever death and burial they desire as long as it doesn't involve harming others, etc. Otherwise, you might as well attack the American funeral industry's crazy claims of "forever embalming", hermetically sealed caskets to "preserve forever", and the rest of the bunk they sell the elderly and vulnerable as "necessary" at prices that would make most people blush.^{— Unsigned, by: 173.22.124.89 / talk / contribs}

Congratulations on a pitch-perfect cutout'n'throwaway rendition of the Galileo gambit - David Gerard (talk) 14:48, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

And of course, never forget that because of what we have deduced from our all-encompassing, all-inclusive knowledge of this universe and all its machinations, that we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no possible way to revive a cryonically preserved person......ever. Right?Phaedrus (talk) 07:39, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

And indeed, perhaps one day we will learn how to preserve and resuscitate a dead person successfully. But right now we don't even know if the preservation techniques being used are valid. Get it yet? ħuman 08:38, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

"But right now we don't even know if the preservation techniques being used are valid." - Exactly my point. We don't know, yet we have a 'science' page dedicated to explaining that we know it won't work.

Also, by this site's own definition of "Galileo gambit", my posting does not even come close. I claim to be a victim of what, or who? I merely state that I do not have the hubris to state I know the future, nor do I think that prophets, preachers, Jim Baker, Stephen Hawking, or anybody else can, either. I'm not saying 'it will work', I am saying 'I don't know, and neither do you'. Also, I am responding to a posting that contains much ad hominem 'evidence' - complete with name calling and broad brush prejudices (all cryonics enthusiasts are fanatics, for instance)that masquerade as praise (thus, they are motivated to manage money wisely and not cheat people) that are similar to the Jim Crow era attacks on minorities (they are lazy, and stupid, but hey, they make great tap dancers). It is disappointing to see people of the 'rational' mindset take for faith that they are right b/c they can tell us the future of science b/c they are endowed with some kind of superior thinking ability mere mortals (or fanatics!) don't have. Reminds me of many years ago when I attended a skeptics conference. I merely suggested that one celled organisms might eke out a pathetic existence somewhere in the vast universe other than Earth, and had it politely explained to me how it had been 'proven' (despite lack of any tech at the time that enabled us to see other solar systems - insert names of scientists, and lofty sci talk here) planets could not form anywhere in the cosmos (except here!) due to the unique conditions of our solar system, ergo, no life of ANY kind (to admit one celled organisms live elsewhere somehow translates to a 'rational' thinker as 'space aliens visit the Earth and abduct people') and then I was castigated for my 'belief' in UFOs (that I don't recall ever mentioning), which generated laughter and didn't answer my base question as to how anybody could know, without seeing, what is (or isn't) around other stars. Now, of course, nobody with any serious credentials says there aren't planets orbiting other stars - tech that was 'impossible' exists to contradict that view. Nanotech is coming, period. What that means, nobody knows. To state otherwise is merely a regurgitation of the same old religious faith based thinking, re-packed in science talk.75.39.195.165 (talk) 19:46, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Combining spirits and ice

... which is what is suggested, can make a good drink. Nothing more. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 18:12, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The X PRIZE Foundation floats an idea.

The Organ Cryopreservation X PRIZE, merely a proposal with no funding yet:

http://www.xprize.org/prize-development/life-sciences#organ_cryopreservation

The description says:

. . . advances in organ cryopreservation will be essential to specialists in different cryobiological sub-disciplines. For example, this includes the reversible cryopreservation of humans and animals that can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future.

Advancedatheist (talk) 15:52, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

No funding? Maybe Arianna Huffington should reach into her spare purse and pull out a million or two. --MtD^{Pinko Scum} 16:04, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

The X PRIZE Foundation apparently proposes a lot of ideas, then looks for sponsors for funding. Qualcomm put up the prize money for the Medical Tricorder X PRIZE, for example, despite the silliness factor of the Star Trek connection: http://www.qualcommtricorderxprize.org/Advancedatheist (talk) 16:53, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

There's a bit of research cash in cryobiology, specifically to preserve organs for transplantation. It is one of the many, many building blocks that could maybe lead to working cryonics - David Gerard (talk) 17:04, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Some thoughts.

I've thought about it for some while, did some reading on the relevant topics, and it seems to me that:

Given the cracking of the ice and such, requiring the scan into a 'blueprint' followed by fixing of the blueprint, the revival other than via uploading into computers is not going to happen and is an outright stupid idea. Thus one has to focus on the revival via some form of scanning into computer and massive processing to recover the connections, similar to un-schredding the scans of shredded documents left by Stasi. Note that it is possible to use dscam1 protein diversity that normally prevent neurons from connecting to themselves during development (dscam1 acts as id), to find which wire goes where. Think of it as of coloured cable with about 20000 unique colours, in random-ish bundles, allowing you to identify the bundles as well by what colours are close to what.

For that the best option could be to cut apart the skull - even many hours after death - take brain out, slice into small pieces, freeze pieces individually (which allows for lower damage through the piece at the expense of higher damage at surface), store frozen pieces at low cost in a bulk storage facility. Note, by the way, that distributed brain damage - non-localized - is recovered from much better than localized stroke, for same neuronal loss.

The possibility of revival is very remote.

Other approaches practised now are a cargo-cult 'best effort' imitation of the medicine and as such all the excess costs paid over the cheap option above are a fraud, operating by misleading the public, and very possibly less effective at revival than cheap, non-fraudulent option would have been. Essentially the cryonics as it is, is optimized not for revival or cost-benefit but for making people sign up; hence the utter bullshit about the 'repair' in situ, and the waste of money (while pocketing the hefty percentage) on maximizing revival in an impossible scenario. The true best effort would direct those money towards development of recovery technologies.

The current method is optimized to look most conservative to the people who do not have understanding of the small structure, and thus is optimized for preserving form, but not function. The extra chemicals necessary to prevent ice crystal formation during bulk freezing, may likely be destroying the chemically-stored information in the brain, and may conceivably make it dramatically less likely that the information would ever be recovered, also by chemical interference with plausible 'nanotech', which would not at all resemble the robotics, but would be chemical in nature, and may be as prosaic as a bunch of special stains to allow scanner to recover the data. Simply put, the toxic chemicals used to prevent ice formation may easily be degrading all of the chemically-stored information in the brain, and may very likely end up toxic to the "nanotech" as well. Dmytry (talk) 13:25, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Dunno about "probable", but yes, it would be good to know to what degree the cryopreservatives affect the proteins long-term memory is stored in. This is something that should be measurable, I have no idea if anyone's checked it yet. I suspect the original brain is near-irretrievable and the prospect of revival is to come back as an emulation. Which is technically better than zero chance of coming back, but still somehow not convincing - David Gerard (talk) 16:24, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Deleting unsourced claims

I've gone through and deleted a bunch of obviously biased, unsourced claims. I'm generally pro-cryonics, but I don't think there's anything wrong with critics as long as they provide evidence for their criticisms. After all, cryonicists have a vested interest in listening to valid objections, so that cryonics can be improved, and the chances of revival increased. If you want to re-add stuff, please provide sources or other evidence for the claim; you might want to check out, eg., this article as a discussion of some of the relevant issues. ^{— Unsigned, by: 64.206.235.200 / talk / contribs}

You should read the archives of this talk page. You also removed a pile of cited stuff - David Gerard (talk) 22:39, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Considering there is zero evidence for cryonics actually working that's a good laugh. ħuman 01:49, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Omigod, now I read that link. "On this issue, I'm in the same position as the general; in the same way as a tank fuelled by sand seems plausible enough to him, it makes sense to me to imagine..." What an idiot you are. ħuman 03:10, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

What makes him an idiot? The point of that little exchange was to demonstrate that the author understands that though something might seem plausible to him, it is quite possible (and maybe even likely!) that such a thing is actually quite impossible. As it would be pretty easy to discover why tanks cannot run on sand for fuel, perhaps it is also easy to discover why brains cannot be losslessly archived. So he looked everywhere he could think of, and found nothing. What about this behavior makes him an idiot? This seems like particularly rational behavior to me.

As a side-note, I'm a little irritated with the article's portrayal of the costs involved. I personally signed up for cryonics from the Cryonics Institute for around $290/year (I'm not a crazy! This amount of money is ridiculously small, and I have spent more money on less useful things). I also have a separate, unrelated life insurance policy, so my children's inheritance is not jeopardized. --GofG (talk) 19:56, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

If you have that sort of money to spare, you'd be doing the world a far better service by sending it to WaterAid. ^theist 11:33, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Japanese magnetic field cryopreservation of teeth

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0011224010000854

"Results indicated that a 0.01 mT of a magnetic field, a 15-min hold-time, and a plunging temperature of −30 °C led to the greatest survival rate of PDL cells"

Utter and complete bullshit. 0.01 milliTesla is 0.1 gauss. Earth's magnetic field is about 1 gauss. 0.1 gauss is not going to do any magical shit to water when it's freezing. Dmytry (talk) 22:50, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

If magnetic fields did anything chemical like that at low temperatures my entire professional life would be fucked. I'll read the full paper a little later, but considering the low quality abstract and the figures available, it doesn't look dramatically conclusive. ^moral 11:28, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I didn't make it part 0.01mT in abstract. To reword ICP song: I see miracles all around me. Stop and look around, it's all astounding All those magnetic perpetual motion devices, bracelets, blankets, water magnetizers... Fucking magnets, how do they work? And I don't wanna talk to a scientist Who did the tooth study Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed. Dmytry (talk) 18:32, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Looks like cryoprotectants do trash the memories

Neuroscientist on LessWrong goes what the hell are you people on about. Extensive thread follows in which he goes "no really, you're fucked, this is actually ludicrous." I don't understand what he's talking about at all, but it appears our effectiveness section is just wrong. But I want more than a link to a passing comment to say so. I've asked for pointers to more, in the manner of a dog asking just how that card trick was done - David Gerard (talk) 07:15, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Yep, that's what I gathered. There's too much that can go wrong with using cryoprotectants. I personally would rather have my brain cut up into small slices and then flash frozen, perhaps hours after death, than have this weird ritual with cryo-protecting it ASAP and then freezing whole head. The nanobots fixing damage is just stupid; nanobots would need some global-ish data processing, at which point it is pretty much upload and rebuild situation. The flash freezing, from what I gather, is certain to preserve the information, which can not be said of the cryo-protectants. The diffuse damage from cutting is small % of the cells dying diffusely, comparable to concussion; i'd rather entirely lose data in small % of the brain cells, diffusely distributed, than screw up synaptic weights over entire brain (mis-regulation of entire network is the sort of stuff that psychiatric disorders are made of). This sort of thing can work assuming pretty much any future outcome where you'd want to be revived at all (I don't think progress could stop without very very major very bad economical consequences, so not counting the futures where the technology never goes much further than today). edit: also cutting up and flash freezing would cost like 1000$ tops, then keeping frozen is pretty damn cheap with good big dewar for many specimens. At the very least, this stuff will sometime be useful for neuroscience; a quantum lottery can be set up in the contract for the destructive research uses, hahaha (for MWI believers). All that stuff is way, way uncomfortable for people to think through, unlike the imitation of medicine with whole head freezing; the contrarian hipsters wouldn't want that, so no real market. Dmytry (talk) 22:06, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

looking into it some more: some cryoprotectants are probably needed even with thin slice flash freezing, to avoid ice crystal formation altogether. My understanding is that the faster is the cooling rate the less cryoprotectants are necessary. This needs a lot of careful study and experimentation with freezing small brains or cultured neural networks.

Defensiveness with a curious lack of even noting the obvious experiment to do - David Gerard (talk) 07:33, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

PZ on the same topic, though not in a manner that confronts cryonicists quite as head-on so will be ignored by them - David Gerard (talk) 16:15, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

What you’re going to be recording is the dying brain, with cells spewing and collapsing and triggering apoptotic activity everywhere. <- I thought this point would be so self-evident that it didn't need iterating to anyone, never mind singularitarians! Take all these unconscious brains that have been frozen - even assuming the process did work and wasn't utter bullshit, you've preserved an unconscious and semi-dead state to begin with. I mean, what the fuck sort of magic do they expect to be needed here?!? ^gnostic 17:12, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

By extension of that concept, the chemical differences between the fluidic state of a brain working at room temperature and and the solid state of a frozen version are massive. The chemical interactions that allow for biology to function certainly aren't all quenched in the ground state - in fact, this is the very reason the brain works - so I don't see how freezing it to this unnatural state preserves anything if you take it from a purely reductionist point of view. While PZ's chopped-up horse analogy is apt, what they're also proposing is like having a convoluted piece of glasswear filled with water, then assuming we can figure out the shape of that glass by decanting the water into a different glass and freezing it. You're not comparing like with like at all. This is fucking insanity as a concept! ^bomination 17:18, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

I think he's completely wrong about the speedup, though. Speeding up and slowing down simulation changes nothing on the inside. If you are careful, no result ever depends to how many CPU cores you throw at simulation. (I'm assuming software simulation here, not some physical re-creation). There's certainly a lot of problems but speeding up the sims won't be one of them (provided you can keep sims entertained). Dmytry (talk) 17:03, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia

Have a look at the Wikipedia article on cryonics. It reads at times like an ad. It could need some editing. This entry at RW could serve as a good source.--Baloney Detection (talk) 20:40, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

RW is quite unlikely to pass as a Reliable Source. The trouble is that most of the world thinks cryonics is barely even a thing, or is a science-fictional construct - so there's very little in the way of serious criticism. This RW article is basically the best critical article on the topic in existence, and that's saying very little indeed - David Gerard (talk) 21:07, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

I've been looking into it lately. It's truly ridiculous just how little science is there. I've been reading stuff for hours and I still do not know if: anyone ever looked whenever the vitrification solution reaches all of the brain, whenever the un-myleinated fibres are intact, etc etc. I don't think anyone even bothered to check in depth the microscopic fate of 'cadaver brain simply thrown into liquid nitrogen'. (The ice is going to totally shred the dehydrated remnants of the cells; it might well be that you could de-shred this with software). It is a ridiculous situation: you have no assurance that throwing a severed head into liquid nitrogen truly loses the information, and no assurance that cryonics with cryoprotectants does not lose the information! Dmytry (talk) 16:42, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Pascal's Wager Fallacy incorrectly cited in article

The section on Pascal's Wager seems to misinterpret what Pascal's Wager *is* and in the process commits a fallacy of its own.

The fact that the probability of the wager is astronomically small is *not* what makes Pascal's Wager fallacious. In order to be guilty of the problems Pascal's Wager presents, the cryonicist argument would have to either deny that opportunity costs exist, or there must be similarly probable outcomes with opposite payoffs (e.g. taking the wager and believing in the Christian God might get you damned by some other, comparably probable, jealous god. Likewise, one could just as easily posit a god that doesn't mind a lack of belief, but hates false beliefs). The cryonicist argument does not do either of these things, and thus is not an instance of Pascal's Wager.

An extended explanation can be found here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/z0/the_pascals_wager_fallacy_fallacy/

GodlessPaladin (talk) 14:33, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

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An addendum: It appears that the above link is already referenced in the article. However, the reference context constitutes a rather blatant straw man argument. The text of the article reads "and saying that being a Pascal's Wager variant doesn't make their argument fallacious.[43][47][48]" The article referenced does not claim that cryonics commits a Pascal's Wager "variant" yet is non-fallacious despite this. Instead, the referenced article claims that cryonics does not commit Pascal's Wager at all. Those statements are not even close to being logically equivalent and treating them as such is, quite simply, wrong.

In summary, the sourced claims don't match up with the text of the sources, and more importantly the claims are quite simply wrong. Yes, cryonics is a very risky investment. Yes, the odds of achieving an extended lifespan are very small. No, that does not mean it commits Pascal's Wager. No, the sourced article does not include any cryonicist claiming that committing Pascal's Wager (or some "variant" thereof) is somehow okay. As a result, I have removed the brief section on Pascal's Wager.

GodlessPaladin (talk) 14:53, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

It's close enough to Pascal's Wager that the comparison has been repeatedly obvious, particularly to sceptics (e.g.). You can claim it technically isn't, but doing so misses the point, i.e. that it has the same problem of doing utilitarian calculation on an extremely small probability. So I don't think you can just cut the section on a technicality - David Gerard (talk) 16:59, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

You're missing the point on a few levels. First off, you say it has the "same problem" as Pascal's Wager in that it involves utilitarian calculations based on small probability, even though small probability is not actually one of the things that makes Pascal's Wager fallacious reasoning, and acting as if it is represents a misunderstanding of what Pascal's Wager is. If you want to say that arguing in favor of a course of action with a very small probability of success and a potentially high reward is the fallacious flaw of Pascal's Wager, then I'd contend that you're simply wrong; Pascal's Wager is fallacious because it ignores comparably likely outcomes which have opposite results. By contrast I am not aware of any kind of logical principle that supports the notion that gambling on long odds is fallacious. Nor does your statement excuse the use of sources that I cited in my above statement. It is not appropriate to say that a claim was made, then "source" said statement with various links that do not make anything remotely similar to said claim. Where did anyone in those sources actually say that it was acceptable to argue Pascal's Wager?

I would contend that these things aren't "technicalities" to be trivially dismissed. They are glaring errors. You don't get to pretend to be a logician if you say that someone insulting you is the ad hominem fallacy, for example (another commonly misapplied fallacy). When talking about logical fallacies, structure is crucially important. Superficially resembling a structure is insufficient. GodlessPaladin (talk) 18:09, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Let's take a look at everything in the section... which you claim I am arguing to remove based on a "technicality" while it might otherwise have some kind of merit.

Cryonics enthusiasts are fond of applying a variant of Pascal's wager to cryonics[46]" <---As I have explained, the argument is not an example of Pascal's wager, and indeed your own source (46) very clearly points this out (in fact, your statements make it feel like you only read the title of the articles you used as sources and assumed they agreed with your foregone conclusions. Every single one of the sources in the section contradicts your claims). "But," you might say, "I said it's a variant!" Well, the issue with that is that you're veering off into unfalsifiable territory there. How do you define "variant?" If you change the logical form of a fallacy even a little bit, the fallacy isn't committed. Could I call an insult a "variant" of the ad hominem fallacy, even though an insult clearly isn't sufficient criteria to make a statement an ad hominem argument? To do so is essentially just to try and play up an arbitrary and unrelated scientific or logical sounding buzzword in the same manner that such terms are abused by pseudoscientists. The use of the concept of a "variant" of Pascal's Wager here is simply an intellectually bankrupt concept that adds no informational value to the article. But let's go on.

"and saying that being a Pascal's Wager variant doesn't make their argument fallacious.[43][47][48]" I can't see any cryonicist saying anything like that in any of those three links. As far as I can tell from what I read in those sources, this statement is simply made up from whole cloth. So all that's left of the section after that is... Merkle's Matrix.

The questionable aspect here is omitting the bit where "sign up" means "spend $120,000 of your children's inheritance for a spot in the freezer and a bunch of completely scientifically unjustified promises from shaky organizations run by strange people who are medical incompetents." It also assumes that living at some undetermined future date is sufficiently bonum in se that it is worth spending all that money that could be used to feed starving children now."

The argument given here is essentially saying "you are making a significant expenditure in a risky venture! I don't think you should make risky ventures such as playing the lottery, since you could better invest those funds in other things." That's a fair opinion, but it has *nothing at all* to do with Pascal's Wager. So why is there a heading about Pascal's Wager at all?

These issues aren't technicalities. It renders the entire section at best purposeless and redundant and at worst counterproductive and misleading. GodlessPaladin (talk)

Another variant is the Global Warming Wager - that doesn't do exactly the same thing as Pascal's, but it doesn't stop comparisons being drawn. We could re-write all these criticisms without any reference to Pascal at all, and they wouldn't change validity. This is just trying to worm out of a very serious problem with investing so heavily in something with an infinitesimal probability of working. ^gnostic 17:29, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, there are plenty of valid arguments you could make. But "It's Pascal's Wager, and these straw men (which don't actually seem to exist in the numerous, immediately appended sources) are just denying that being Pascal's Wager is a problem" is not one of them. GodlessPaladin (talk) 18:45, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Evading Permanent Death

My comment was intended as snark emphasizing that NO scientific hope of evading permanent death exists. If that's unclear or doesn't add to the article, that's fine. However, I think the term "best current hope of evading permanent death" is a little strange. It can be read to suggest that there is some other, more rational, option. Jonee (talk) 19:01, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree that it seems rather strange and inappropriate. "--And really believe that freezing your freshly-dead body is the best current hope of evading permanent death" rather naturally implies that you have some better idea and are ridiculing the alternative. As is, if the premise that the limited preservation afforded by cryonics has a nonzero positive chance of success compared to traditional burial/cremation/corpse disposal methods is accepted, taking steps which may prove to be entirely useless (but have a small hypotehtical chance of being relevant to future processes, however wild) is your best bet for evading permanent death short of actually participating in hard scientific research pertinent to the subject of evading permanent death. That is, unless you can present a cogent counterargument positing a comparable or better bet towards accomplishing the same goal, or demonstrating that said bet has a literally zero chance of success or has a chance of having an opposite result (somehow shortening your lifespan).

I suggest altering the wording. If you can't posit a better hope (or establish that the amount of hope in cryonics is literally not a positive, nonzero value, no matter how small), the statement doesn't really make sense as a snark. "Best chance" doesn't need to mean "remotely good chance."

GodlessPaladin (talk) 19:12, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

That wasn't my snark. My snark was to add

Given that the other currently available methods for attempting to evade permanent death are religion and magic, this claim might not be so silly.

after the statement. This was removed and I took the discussion to the talk page. Jonee (talk) 19:25, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Discussion Tropes

Deleted "If they said "Bayesian," ask for their numbers on the hypothetical scientific breakthroughs required for faster than light travel or antigravity." on the basis that... well, the proposed comeback is essentially a non-sequitor. The previous sentence asking the hypothetical debater to show their work is much more relevant and renders the deleted sentence redundant anyways. GodlessPaladin (talk) 20:11, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Down the bottle

A breathtaking example of smug denial of physical reality. Because the quasi-magical future artificial superintelligence making everything all right is literally their idea of a slam-dunk counterargument - David Gerard (talk) 12:55, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Pretty damn stupid. I had a useful thought when reading this, though: suppose that I put your brain in a jar of cross linking fixative, maybe even the good ol formaldehyde, maybe something stronger. This fixes the proteins in place by cross linking them. Free floating stuff gets attached to citoskeleton, etc. Then I maybe add some other fixatives (I do not know how stable are the specimens with just the formaldehyde). Like the first steps of sample preparation for microscopy, in other words, which does manage to preserve details at synapses. Is there even any good reason to believe 120 000 $ cryonics - which pumps brain full of powerful solvents that distort, detach and denature god knows what - is not worse for uploading than this? Also, re: "probably not fraud", the guy who alleged stuff about Alcor was himself a cryonicist too, so its bad either way. edit: missed not. Dmytry (talk) 23:42, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Dilemmas

I have tried to list some of the non-medical challenges any revived person will face. Would welcome constructive comments.-Albannach (talk) 22:22, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

The problem with Cryonics is

...Elvis has already left the building.

Deep-frozen mammoths do not come back to life on defrosting. Therefore the theory is flawed. 171.33.222.26 (talk) 15:37, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Mammoths embedded in water ice probably make about as bad a point of reference for human cryonics as mice immersed in liquid nitrogen do, of course. (ObDisclaimer: I think cryonics is horsepuckey.) Hydrogen and Time (talk) 15:43, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Sorry if I am breaking formatting rules by jumping in here, I am not too familiar with wiki protocol. The "Deep-frozen mammoths" argument is invalid for two reasons. First, mammoths are just frozen in ice, not put through some attempted cryopreservation process (e.g. vitrified). Cryonics isn't "freezing" in the same sense that mammoths are frozen. Second, one of the basic premises of cryonics is that we don't have the technology (and won't for a long time) to revive cryopreserved bodies. If we had that technology, we wouldn't need cryonics because we'd be able to heal human bodies of everything including aging. The kind of technologies we would need would be crazy far-off science fiction stuff like nanorobots that can manipulate large quantities of matter with the precision of a single atom, such that matter is "programmable" for the nanorobots. Modifying physical reality would be as easy as modifying a complex computer simulation. Nanorobots of this kind would certainly be sufficient to resurrect cryopreserved bodies (assuming that the cryopreservation process preserves enough physical information to preserve a person's mind and personal identity), but perhaps not necessary. Maybe a less advanced technology would suffice. The point is that you cryopreserve yourself in the hopes that enough physical information is preserved, and hope that in 200, 500, or 1000 years your cryopreserved body is still around and that the people of the future are able and willing to revive you. It's a long bet, but is it any more irrational than buying a lottery ticket? --Chunkymonkey (talk) 06:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Using 'creative association and illogical deduction'

For cryonics to 'work' you would have to be flash frozen while still alive, and preferrably while in 'the prime of life' rather than when the terms of 'the dead parrot sketch' apply. 171.33.222.26 (talk) 16:16, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

We're talking about artificial freezing and technologically advanced revival methods... Unlike the mammoth. For me it's not a question of if, but when and how well. I included a new section on reintegration since defrosting is not the only problem-Albannach (talk) 16:50, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

For many people 'the dead mammoth'/critters in amber staying dead seems a logical reason to disbelieve in cryonics even if accepting that some 'simple life forms' and also seeds can go into 'hibernation' for long periods of time and be revived after centuries or longer.

A transcript of the sketch is here [12] 171.33.222.26 (talk) 19:29, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Until 'they' have a viable method of getting 'the entity that is you' back into the body/a cyborg/a clone, [13] is cheaper and better value.

1. When# viable cryonics is developed, wait until a number of professors and leading politicians have been through the system and successfully revived (as all the bugs will have been sorted out). Until then consider how high in 'the list of energy users' cryonics facilities are likely to be in the event of a prolonged power outage. 171.33.197.73 (talk) 16:51, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Excessively harsh?

I was quite surprised to learn from this article that even crude cryonics was proven to actually work in 1957. Seriously, you can just drop mice into LN2 without any preparation and then revive them? And they live about as long as they normally would? I've read about cryonics many times, from proponents, and never heard anything this optimistic. Even cryonics.org says "Although a whole mammal has not yet been cryopreserved to cryogenic temperatures and revived, the progress of science is moving in that direction."

"...cadaver freezing is not science. The knowledge necessary for the revival of whole mammals following freezing and for bringing the dead to life does not currently exist"

So what's going on? Who's telling the truth? ^{— Unsigned, by: Hmmph / talk / contribs}

That single study needs closer examination - particularly for the fact that it hasn't been duplicated, at all, in the fifty years following. It also appears the really obvious experiment (teach C. elegans to run a maze, freeze it, thaw it, see if it still can) has never been done by anyone - David Gerard (talk)

Are there papers attempting to replicate it? Hmmph (talk) 01:36, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

A few years ago me and a coworker were talking about the exaggerated freezing properties of LN2 shown in Hollywood movies. So one day we wired up a hotdog with some thermocouples and heated it up to an internal temperature of 98.6F to simulate body temp. Then we dropped it into a dewar of LN2. 1. It took several minutes for the internal temps to dip below freezing. 2. Once internal temps did get below freezing, the hotdog plummeted down to LN2 temp within 10-15 seconds. 3. Once the core reached LN2 temp, the hotdog promptly shattered fairly dramatically. Not a scientific experiment by any means, but I do view unduplicated claims of reviving relatively unprepared critters that have been dropped straight into LN2 with a bit of skepticism. --Inquisitor (talk) 03:04, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. The mice claim is off by a ridiculously many orders of magnitude. According to wikipedia, you need cooling rates in excess of 10 000 Kelvin per second to prevent crystallization. Dmytry (talk) 20:02, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it was a demonstration where the mice doesn't freeze at all because of the vapour layer? Sort of like how you can dip your hand into liquid nitrogen briefly. Dmytry (talk) 23:37, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Water-Ice Expansion

I'm not much of a writer but I though it might be worth mentioning that the human body is about 50%-65% water. This means that when the water freezes to ice and expands by 9% it will rip parts of the body up, making them unusable. This is especially worrying as 92% of the bodies plasma is water, meaning that blood vessels and arteries would all expand by about 8%. Just thought this might be worth a mention? - Hobby (talk) 13:30, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

The point is

There is presently no way of (a) capturing 'the bit of the neural systems that insists it is an autonomous and real person' and (b) persuading the body to revert to a 'goodlooking person like them in the TV soaps' - therefore all cryonics will achieve is 'a vast array of elderly zombies' (develop horror movie to taste). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 14:49, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Confusing wording with regards to the mind/brain

From the article:

Neural net information (i.e., the mind) appears to be preserved in strengths of neuron connections in dendrites.

Is that what so-called cryonics scientists claim? Because that's certainly confusing to wrong in terms of cognitive neuroscience.dildz^zzz 08:52, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Nah, it's my terrible summary of my understanding a coupla years ago. Feel free to improve - David Gerard (talk) 17:06, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Were you making a general statement on brain states? Or mind states? dildz^zzz 08:01, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Mind states, where the information is stored (accepting the cryonics presumption that you can even meaningfully speak of the information outside its physical substrate) - David Gerard (talk) 10:25, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I might be too strict, but saying that mind states are represented in neuronal brain networks seems a little off to me. So, it's not that they aren't, mind states are of course grounded in the brain. And perhaps more importantly the mapping between brain states and mind states is demonstrably many to many. Perhaps, that explains why I'm a little cautious about the phrasing but also the semantics. In short, I'm not sure what is trying to be said exactly. Are you saying that they will wake up with the same mind or the same mind state? dildz^zzz 10:07, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

The actual answer is "whatever answer seems most rhetorically suitable at that moment to the cryonicist you're arguing with." I suppose whatever constitutes a physical realisation of the mind as an organisation of information that cryonicists claim they can get running on some hardware somewhere - David Gerard (talk) 12:07, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

If we're taking full blown theoretical neuroscience then at the topmost of Marr's levels (or any level of analysis of your choice) the mind can be modelled on a non-brain-like computer. Multiple realizability had that coveted. I just don't think that sentence makes sense, sorry. dildz^zzz 10:07, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

I've removed that sentence entirely as it doesn't actually help much in context. How's the longer sentence lower down? - David Gerard (talk) 14:26, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, much better. By the way, sorry for confusing previous comment, re-reading after editing is important. dildz^zzz 08:32, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

List of facilities?

Just moved this from the page:

Not all cryonics facilities are run by libertarians however, Time Ship is run by a non profit group called the Stasis Foundation. As it is considered a public charity, it is exempt from federal income tax. Upon completion of the facilities Time Ship will also be the worlds largest cryonics facility.

The charities are run by libs too. However, this may be worth putting on a list of operating facilities (not just planned ones). Anyone? - David Gerard (talk) 17:48, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

How many facilities would you estimate there are? I can't imagine there's that many, so it would be a short list. Amateur Encyclopedist (talk) 18:38, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

I added this paragraph to the page for survival seed bank.

Frozen zoos are a type of cryo preservation facility. The frozen ark is one such facility, run by the Zoological Society of London, the Natural History Museum and University of Nottingham; it only gathers samples of DNA and living cells. Most frozen zoos also collect sperm eggs and embryos. Samples are taken from animals in zoos and those threatened with extinction in the wild; this is done in the hopes that some day, cloning technologies will have matured sufficiently to resurrect extinct species. There are less than a dozen frozen zoos world wide. Amateur Encyclopedist (talk) 22:56, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Bob Nelson speaks

[14] This is fucking amazing to read - David Gerard (talk) 23:15, 14 July 2014 (UTC)

Another question is

... are the people who have themselves "frozen with added antifreeze chemicals" when they have been clinically declared dead (and their relatives having not successfully contested the will on the grounds of unnecessary expense of processing and maintenance etc) going to be the ones that those who actually develop the technology are going to wish to revive?

Makes far more sense to invest in a combination of "complex recording devices" and "(uncanny-valley subverting)humanoid-robotic development" and get yourself uploaded in due course (unless people wish to be transferred to animal-robots or plant-robots), or get transferred into an online world using (incomprehensible technobabble about a system not yet developed)' 82.44.143.26 (talk) 15:22, 20 February 2015 (UTC)